Cracked Pots - July 24, 2012

Every year there's a really fun event at McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale.  It's called Cracked Pots.  It's a show and sale of art created entirely from recycled materials.  Yesterday we went to Edgefield and spent the night in order to be there for today's show.

Edgefield opened in 1911 as the county poor farm.  It continued as such until the 1940s, when it transitioned to a nursing home.  It closed in 1982 and fell into disrepair until the 1990s when the McMenamin brothers restored it and opened it as a pub and restaurant, then later a hotel.  The decor is the same in all their hotels, including the Old St. Francis School in Bend, where we stayed recently.  Edgefield is much larger than the school, however.  Here are a few photos of the facilities.

David spent some time on the side porch.

This is the beautiful outdoor soaking pool.

The McMenamins trademark decor is lots of painted surfaces, some quite surprising.

 

The art show was on the grounds surrounding the lodge.  Here is a sample of what was there. 

 

 We bought a piece of garden art for the front yard. 

Ashland - July 4, 2012

We made our annual family trip to Ashland to see some plays and eat lots of good food.  As it happens, the time we chose included the Fourth of July.  This is a big deal in Ashland.  The main streets are closed all day for the parade and lots of other activities.  The newspaper said 20,000 people were expected.

Here's a look down the main street just before the parade started.

There were several antique cars.  These were our favorites.  The first one is a 1913 Cartercar.

Here's the Macaroni Noodle Band.  Macaroni's is a restaurant.

The Boy Scouts were up to no good with two catapults slinging water balloons.

And finally, my favorite entry, from my favorite store.  The Websters is a fabulous yarn store.  They knitted a patchwork cover for their car.

It was a fun day, the weather was perfect, and we even managed to squeeze in two plays that day.

Trip to Bend - June 28, 2012

Instead of doing our usual day trip up to Sisters to do some birding we decided to go up in the afternoon and spend the night in Bend.  Then we'd be able to get an early start on our birding in the morning.  We had also talked to Mary Schmidgall about joining us for the birding part, as she was going to be up there anyway on other business. 

We arrived in Bend about 4:30 in the afternoon and checked in to our hotel, at the Old St. Francis School.  It's one of the McMenamin's conversions, which are all over Oregon.  They're always fun and funky.  This one is an old Catholic school dating back to 1936. 

Our room was very nice and spacious.  The walls had been covered with heart pine from an old Jim Beam distillery warehouse in Kentucky. 

One of the interesting features of the hotel is the tiled soaking pool. 

After getting settled in our room, we walked a couple of blocks to the farmer's market, which was small but very nice.  Another short walk took us to the banks of the Deschutes River.  The banks are lined with beautiful homes and parks.

We walked through the downtown area, looking for a place for dinner.  Nothing really jumped out at us, so we returned to the St. Francis and had a wonderful dinner there.  After dinner we set out walking again, this time in the nearby neighborhood.  There were lots of interesting older homes.  We even found a 'Cadishack.'

The next morning we had another great meal at the hotel, then headed for Sisters, where we met Mary.

Our first stop was at Indian Springs campground, where we spotted something moving in a birdhouse up on a tree.  No birds here, just a couple of chipmunks.

 The weather was great and we had a fun day of birding.  Our most exciting find was a chestnut-sided warbler, which we had heard about.  We found it easily and all had great looks at it.  It's really a beautiful little bird.

We had lunch in Sisters at the Depot Deli, then continued birding the area.  About 4:00 we finally decided to call it a day and headed for home.