Road warriors

First the leopard spots caught my eye. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a motorcycle quite like this one.

Then I noticed that it and the other cycles with it had Mexican license plates. And some pretty interesting travel stickers. Grand Teton! Yellowstone! Glacier National Park! These scooters put on a lot of miles! All the more surprising because they were clean. A lot cleaner than my car.

Then I saw the Alaska stickers. I was seriously impressed. I finally noticed a sticker for Rodano Mexico, a television program that features motorcycles. I saw these bikes in Oregon and there wasn’t anyone around to ask questions. Darn.

Lunch at the honeysuckle cafe

Here’s a hummingbird as it worked its way through lunch. Hummers are fascinating birds. Their wings move in a figure eight motion which allows them to move forward, backward, sideways, up and down. They can even fly upside down for short distances.

Hummingbirds have a heart rate that can be as high as 1,250 beats per minute while they fly and forage. At rest it can slow to 250 beats per minute. To conserve their energy reserves they can lower their body temperature to 55 degrees F (13C) and their heartcan slow down to 50 beats per minute.

Berry season

Summer in the Pacific Northwest brings the sweet ripening of berries, which sometimes seem to grow like they were invented here. After strawberries are picked out a steady parade of berries ripen. Last week I noticed that Graysmarsh Farm is advertising raspberries and I headed out for my first pick of the season.

I love raspberries and fresh pick-them-yourself berries will spoil any berry lover for the “store bought” variety that promptly seem overpriced, not ripe enough, and, well, just plain old. And Graysmarsh on a sunny day has a wonderful view of the Olympics.

I said, “overpriced,” didn’t I? I didn’t catch the exact weight of my booty here. I think it was about two and a half pounds. This set me back $4.56.

Heceta Head Lighthouse, Oregon

In last Thursday’s post it was impossible to see the Heceta Head Lighthouse from the beach below. As we drive south on the coast it came into view. Here’s a black and white shot. It was raining at the lighthouse as I took it.

Here’s a longer view of the coast near the lighthouse, a rugged landscape typical of the northern Pacific Coast. This area gets over 70 inches of rain a year, so it was no surprise that hats and rain hoods were necessary.

The Oregon coast

Our first couple of days at the central Oregon coast last month felt a lot like home. That is, it rained. And then it cleared. And then it rained some more. Some of the more striking views we had were through the veil of rain squalls. Not the best for photographs. This is the beach below Heceta Head lighthouse. The lighthouse is hidden behind trees to the left of the keeper’s house on the hillside. I’ll post shots of the lighthouse in the next few days.

Here’s the coast between squalls. Well, it was dry where I was standing.