Screws In My Coffee

My daughter Kalia is graduating from high school today. I am so proud of her.

I drove from Austin to Portland Oregon in my new truck and fifth wheel. I visited with my children and did some sight seeing with Sylvia, her brother John and his wife Phyllis.

I went through Simi Valley on my way to Portland and visited my mother. My mom and her dog Gidgie are doing OK. We did not stay very long and headed up to Valencia, CA to sleep in a Wal-Mart parking lot. We stopped in a Wal-Mart parking lot twice on our return trip, in Sacremento, CA and just before Phoenix, AZ. Stopping for the night in a parking lot is not ideal but it is free and allows you to sleep and then get on the road the next day rested.

The drive up I-5 was really nice and it gave Sylvia a chance to see the miles of beautiful orchards and farm land. When we got over the Siskiyous pass and into Oregon we were treated to a wonderful show of fall colors. There are a lot of maple trees is Oregon and they were in full show as we drove from Medford to Tualaltin where we stayed in an RV park.

We did some sight seeing up the Columbia Gorge one day. Seeing the river and the fall colors was spectacular. We made a stop at the Vista House and Multnomah Falls.You can see all the pictures at the Wormley Photo Archive.

I took my family to the Columbia Gorge which is always a favorite day trip for us. We had no place in mind for the hike when we left, but my son Zak got hungry righ near Starvation Creek State Park so that is wherewe stopped for our hike. The Columbia Gorge is beautiful any time of the year. We traveled about 60 miles from our house to get to Starvation Creek.

This picture was taken near the base of the water fall. I did not get a good photo of the water fall but you can see how beautiful the area is from this photo. Using a self timer on my tri-pod I was able to get a fairly decent picture of my family stainding by the small water fall. There are larger water falls in the area but this is the first time that we visited this small and quite retreat. There were no large crowds at this water fall like there are at the world famous Multnomah Falls just a few miles west.

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Well for some reason Terry and I are still married. We celebrated 22 years of marriage on April 24, 2003.

Well writing is therapy for me and I have to write to think. I am still in a daze over the death of my dad and the shock of being back in Portland after spending a few months in Texas. I supposed that shifting gears is supposed to be easy but for me now days it is not. One thing that I have realized is that throughout my life I have always had circles of friends that were very different from each other.

So what has stayed consistent during my transition from a boot wearing geek to a fleece jacket wearing soccer dad? The constant thread is the fact that I still like photography. So I am going to continue capturing images with the goal of kick starting my creative mind again. With this in mind I am taking my camera everywhere I go and have been taking pictures.