McMenamins Edgefield

My wife and I traveled down to Troutdale to spend the Thanksgiving holiday at McMenamins Edgefield. I struggled briefly with how to characterize this place, what to call it, and left it at "Edgefield." It's not exactly a resort, nor is it any one other thing that I can think of. It occupies the site and buildings of the Multnomah County Poor Farm, initially built in 1911. It now houses a hotel, brewery, winery, distillery, glass studio, pottery studio, spa, pitch-and-putt golf course, restaurant, theater, and a number of pubs, all on 38 (right now windswept) acres overlooking the Columbia River east of Portland.

All of the buildings are nicely refurbished and maintained in a sound, but relaxed, even fanciful, way. Nothing too polished or slick, but quite nice. Adding to the charm of the place is the amazing effort put into its decoration. Surfaces everywhere, even on the sprinkler pipes, are decorated with murals, paintings, and historical photographs. The paintings and decoration are in many styles, reflecting the work of many artists, but it all shares a lightness and fanciful appreciation of life's delights and the history of this place, which finished its social service life as a nursing home in the middle 80's.

This picture is an example of one of the prominent artists, on a coaster advertising our home town McMenamins location, The Spar.

We spent the morning walking all over the grounds and poking into the buildings (there's a pub in every shed, it seems). The strong down-gorge winds made it a cold walk (and are still buffeting the trees and our room's window), but the sun and the interesting sites kept us going. The golf course looks fun, but only a committed and unserious golfer (Are there any of those? We did see a few later along the walk.) would think today's wind an enjoyable golfing partner.

How to you say “Haute Route”?

Don’t know how to pronounce it, but in a month, I’ll be there, walking it. The route I’ll follow is the summer, hikers’ version of the famous ski mountaineering route between Mt. Blanc in France and the Matterhorn in Switzerland. I came across a description of the route years ago, in an Outside magazine article, and it’s been simmering in the back of my brain ever since. After missing a couple of earlier opportunities, I decided last year that this year was it.

The route begins in Chamonix, France and ends in Zermatt, Switzerland. It works its way into and out of valleys, over passes and alongside glaciers, skirting the northern side of the spine of the Alps between Italy and France-then-Switzerland, climbing up and down over the ribs bracing that backbone. The route is approximately 115 miles (187 km) long and amounts to over 37,000 feet (>11,000 m) of climbing, though none of it is technical. I plan to take two weeks, stopping each night in a town, village, or at a mountain hut.

I bought the recommended guide and read it through a couple of times. I loaned it out to friends I thought might be interested. I bought the maps recommended by the author and pored over them. (Beautiful maps, by the way.) I read every account of others who had made the trip that I could find. Along the way, I added the idea of taking in the start of the Oktoberfest in Munich, once the walking was over. And, as the year began, I started planning the trip.

This is quite a different kind of hiking than I’m used to, in some ways. The biggest difference is that most of my hiking and backpacking here in the Washington is in relative wilderness. If I’m to be out for several days, I won’t see anything approximating civilization for that whole time, unless I happen to catch a view of a distant town from some ridge top along the way. There is almost never a town or accommodation along the way. Nor is there ever anything like the public transportation that many of the towns along the Haute Route offer. These differences offer an increase in comfort and flexibility that, combined with the rich mountain history and the amazing scenery of the region, should make this a trip to remember.

Because of the relative availability of civilization, I won’t have to carry a tent, sleeping bag, stove, fuel, or cook set. At first, I thought that meant I’d be carrying essentially day gear, but with the travel to and from the end points of the walk and plans to spend a little extra time in Germany, I’ll have more. For instance, if I don’t want to wear my hiking boots every day of the three weeks I’m gone, I’ll need to carry another pair of shoes. Since I won’t be in the wilderness all of the time, I think I’ll need to observe higher standards of clothing cleanliness than a regular wilderness hike requires. That means more clothes.

And, since I intend to post dispatches to this blog along the way, as the availability of the requisite technology permits, I’ll be carrying a fair amount more in the way of electronics than I would bother with in the Cascades.

Over the next month, I’ll write about my preparations, starting with some advice I gleaned from another issue of Outside magazine, from Mark Jenkins, who was my favorite of their regular columnists, until they let him get away.

The Sights We Saw

In my first Italy post, I mentioned a lot of the places we visited and the sights we saw. In this one, I thought I’d highlight the, well, highlights of the places we visited.

No visit – certainly no first visit – to Italy would be complete without spending at least some time amongst great art and amazing antiquities. This trip was no exception, but we also saw some wonderful modern art and beautiful countryside that was at least a match.

The highlights of Rome were the powerful statue of Moses by Michelangelo, tucked away in the  San Pietro in Vincoli, quite near our hotel, actually. I remember seeing slides of this statue in my seventh grade Art Appreciation class. (That class was one of the great awakenings of my young life. I still remember portions of it vividly.) It made it on our list because my sister-in-law had insisted to my wife to not miss it. San Pietro in Vaticano was stunning, enormous, and oddly soaring and oppressive at the same time. Walking back from San Pietro, we passed by the Pantheon, which is more beautiful for its antiquity and simplicity. For a thousand years, it was the largest dome in western Europe. My biggest delight of that day of delights, though, was the Trevi Fountain. As you approach, you begin to hear the rush of the water and then, you enter the square and you’re there, with this Baroque wonder.

We spent the following few days staying in Montepulciano and touring the hill towns of Tuscano and Umbria. That topography was one of the highlights of the trip. Long, misty vistas, dramatic, cloudy skies, and charming, walled towns perched on all of the highest hilltops. The façade (and interior) of the Duomo in Orvieto was stunning. We arrived in late afternoon and the lowering sun struck the face directly, absolutely lighting up the gold and white of the decoration. Inside is another delight – one of the chapels is decorated by amazing frescos depicting the Apocalypse. Meanwhile, a small gang of kids was playing soccer against the white and black stripped side walls.

Besides the views of the city from the town of Fiesole to the northeast and the Giardino Boboli to the south, the highlights of Firenze were in the museums. The Galleria degli Uffizi was too big for the time we had allowed for it, but we saw some wonderful paintings in a beautiful building, which has been an amazing museum for centuries. But the best for me was the Botticellis, with the prize going to his The Birth of Venus, which is the most beautiful painting I’ve ever seen. Later that afternoon, we visited the Galleria dell'Accademia nearby, where the star, by far, is Michelangelo’s David. It is amazingly impressive, if only because it is so much larger than I had supposed. I must have circled it a half-a-dozen times.

The next segment took us to Liguria and we spent two days on trips to the coast. My favorite element of that were the Ligurian Sea and the dramatic rocks and cliffs of the coastline. The water was clear and blue and warm. The cliffs plunged into the sea, with only a few pockets of beach, around which the little towns were clustered and sometimes piled. That and the wonderful seafood.

Venezia itself was a highlight. For all of the antiquity that we’d seen in Italy and for all that Venezia contains, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection came as a refreshing surprise. Jumping five centuries in art can be a shocking experience (I remember skipping from the seventeen century to the nineteenth in the Louve and being struck, for a time, until my eyes adjusted, by the thought that those crazy Impressionists couldn’t paint.) but it came as a revelation to me. The collection is awesome. Nearly every early twentieth century artist I’ve heard of was represented there, including Pollack’s stunning Alchemy. There were also amazing works by Calder, Chagall, De Kooning, Duchamp, Ernst, Giacometti, Klee, Magritte, Mondrian, Moore, Motherwell, Picasso, Rothko and a bunch more I hadn’t heard of. As for buildings, the Palazzo Ducale was amazing, a huge house for and monument to the power of Venezia.

Still want to go back.

Our Lodgings in Italy

I’ll expand my previous post, in which I described the itinerary of our recent trip to Italy, by describing the places we stayed in more detail and bringing a focus onto the big discovery for me – the agriturismo. All of the places we stayed in Italy were very nice, with helpful staff, enough English to get by, and comfortable beds. They’re marked on this map with the blue tags.

In Rome, we stayed in the Hotel Nardizzi Americana on Via Firenze, between the Termini and the Spanish Steps. It’s on the fourth floor of the building (though our rooms were on the first floor, just up from the ground floor). The stairs are large and gentle, but for those with luggage or other issues with stairs, there’s a small and Spartan, but smooth and quiet elevator. The rooms were spacious and attractive and the breakfast was good. We used the Internet terminal to look up agriturismos in Liguria. The hotel is also well-situated for getting around in Rome.

Our second stay was at the Azienda Agriturismo Nobile, just outside of Montepulciano. This was our first agriturismo and it certainly impressed for the beauty of the farm and its surroundings. We arrived after dark and were greeted in our room by the full moon streaming directly in the window of our bedroom. The rooms were in a remodeled and expanded farmhouse and our rooms were an apartment, really, with three bedrooms, two baths, and a kitchenette.

The farm seemed to be that of a gentleman farmer – it was very well-groomed and prosperous-looking – and had both grapes, some of which were being harvested while we were there, and olives. This agriturismo falls into the more luxurious category, as it even had a swimming pool. It didn’t, however, include meals for guests, nor did it involve any real interaction with the people there. They had there own nice house on the other side of a big hedge and the owners spoke no useful English (and our Italian was equally useless), so we didn’t really learn anything about them.

Our beds in Firenze were in the Hotel Villa Bonelli in neighboring Fiesole. This was a very nice place in a nice little town (with a longer history, actually, than Firenze down in the valley), up on a ridge above the valley. It offered a couple of nice restaurants and marvelous views of the city below and the surrounding hills and towns. The hotel was also very comfortable and offered a nice breakfast. There was a big German tour group staying there, which was kind of interesting. We used the Internet terminal to finalize our list of agriturismos in Liguria and made the reservation from there.

Our second agriturismo was the Azienda Agriturismo Carnea, just north of La Spezia and east of the Cinque Terre. It was well out of the beaten path, but offered the best views of all, as it was perched near the top of a wild and rugged ridge, from which we could look east to the marble mountains of the Apuan Alps and south, over the ridges and La Spezia, to the Ligurian Sea. The rooms were quite small, but comfortable and more than adequate. Because the hospitality was the joy here. We took breakfast in a large, sunny room, part of the house of our hosts, Beppe and Laura Castiglione. And two of the nights, we had dinner with them in that room, too.

Laura is a terrific cook and nearly all of what we ate was grown or produced there, on the farm – fruits, vegetables, bread, yogurt, and jams and preserves. Beppe had more than enough English to facilitate wonderful conversations, so that we learned that they had left jobs in the city (Milano) to take on this farming-and-hospitality life. We were thoroughly charmed by how well-suited they were to it. The topper was when, on our last evening there, Beppe pulled out his beloved Martin guitar and played folk and popular tunes, while some of us sang along with him. Best evening of the trip.

Our last stay, in Venezia, was at the Pensione Guerrato/Guerratino. This one was on the fourth floor, too. I don’t think there was an elevator, but it was worth the huff. The staff was very nice and had excellent English. The rooms were very large and quite stylish. And, the breakfast was also very good. The best thing about this place, though, was the location: it was in Italy, in Venezia, and well-placed within Venezia (location, location, and location). Around the corner was the fish market (where I saw more than one fellow starting a cut on a whole tuna), down the street a couple of blocks is the famed Rialto bridge, and just around the corner was a terrific restaurant where we had our last dinner in Italy (but that’s another post).

Italy Was Great

I had the wonderful pleasure of spending two weeks in Italy last month with my wife and another couple, friends of ours. This was a long-awaited trip for us – it’d been postponed at least once in the past – and we are grateful that we were able to finally to make the trip.

We arrived in Rome on the evening of Oct. 3 and had a fast and interesting taxi ride (that Fiat hit 170 kph on the way) to the Hotel Nardizzi Americana on Via Firenze. We had two full days in Rome, mostly walking from site to site, taking in the Forum archeological sites, the Coliseum, the Michelangelo statue of Moses in San Pietro in Vincoli, the Pantheon, and the fantastic Trevi fountain.

We left Rome in a rental car. Between the hassle of getting the car and the difficulty of driving it through town, we didn’t hit the ring road until about 3:00 PM. From there it was smooth sailing to Montepulciano, with a stop at Orvieto along the way (where a poster informed us that Bruce Springsteen was playing with the Seeger Session Band in Perugia the next evening).

We spent three nights at the Azienda Agriturismo Nobile, just outside of Montepulciano. During the next two days, we toured Tuscany, visiting Pienza, Montalcino, Cortona, and Assisi. This is beautiful country and the hill towns are very interesting. The first day was really a quest for wine, especially the famous Brunello, but our timing was poor: most of the wineries were closed for tasting on Saturday. We finally came across Fattoria dei Barbi, which was open – its tavern was hopping with a wedding reception – so we bought a few bottles.

The next day we headed north to Firenze, with a stop-over in Siena, where I climbed the Torre Del Mangia, which gives a panoramic view of the town and its surroundings. We stayed in Hotel Villa Bonelli in Fiesole and rode the bus down into the city and back each day. In our two days there, we visited the Giardino Boboli (which brought to mind Versailles, on a smaller scale) and Giardino Bardini (which has terrific views of the city), the Galleria degli Uffizi, and the Galleria dell'Accademia. We spent our evenings in Fiesole, on the hills above the city, watching the sun set over the panorama below.

Next, we headed west, toward Liguria. Along the way, we stopped in Pisa, to take in the Field of Miracles, and in Lucca, to walk the walls around the city. We then headed up the coastal highway to tiny Carnea and our home for the next three nights, the Azienda Agriturismo Carnea. While there, in addition to the wonderful company of our hosts, we took day trips to the coast. The first day we visited the Cinque Terre. I walked the trail between Monterossa and Vernazza while my companions took the boat. We all then took the train to Manarola, from which we walked the Via Dell’Amore to Riomaggiore, where we had dinner before returning to Carnea. The next day we visited Porto Venere, where we walked through the lovely town, beautifully situated on the end of a peninsula. The Ligurian Sea is very beautiful.

We left the agriturismo and headed for Venizia, where we dropped the rental car at the lot near the train station. We took the vaporetto to the Rialto bridge stop and walked a couple of blocks to Pensione Guerrato/Guerratino. We spent the next two days seeing the sights of glorious, doomed Venezia. No cars, no motorbikes, and boats everywhere. (No flooding.) My wife and I were blown away by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and amazed by the Palazzo Ducale. We decided pretty early in our stay there that we’d like to come back, and soon.

Italy is a great country and I loved it. The people were friendly, the land was beautiful, the cities were layered in history, the art was awesome, and the food (the food!) was the best. You can see the sites on a Quikmap here.

Meta: Remote Blogging (Return)

I meant to revise this entry, but decided to leave it there and just complete my thoughts here. In adding the links to that earlier entry, I see that it illustrates some of the defects of “real time” posting – most of the post was spent setting up the point, too little time to develop my thoughts, and no chance for revision within the limited time available on the public equipment. So, here’s my attempt to be more thoughtful.

The first issue is the practical one of how to actually draft the entry. In Ashland, I attempted to use public Internet access, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I know that there were more public machines a few years ago than I found last weekend. More and more, “internet café” is coming to mean “wireless.” There are obvious benefits for a business to shift from providing computers to providing wireless access (less equipment expense, lower support costs, fewer security issues, and less space required). What that’s meant for Ashland is, besides the public library (which has quite a few free, public terminals), there are three public machines that I could find. Two are in a couple of coffee shops and are available for free and the third is in a copy shop, available for a minimal fee. None of these places were open on Sunday and demand was high for them all (although I didn’t try to copy shop this time). It may be that the days of relying on public machines for anything more than a quick e-mail or blog entry during business hours are over.

A personal laptop, then, fits the new world of wireless. There are a couple of other readily-apparent advantages: it’s available for writing whenever you are and you can take notes, draft, revise, and store for when you can upload to the ‘net. It really helps with the immediacy. It also has all of the tools that you are used to. (That was one of the obstacles with the two Macs in the coffee shops. Not complaining about Macs, I’m just very much less familiar with them.) It’s unlikely that I’d ever take a laptop on a hike, but it could work on a boat trip (as long as I had good protection for it). Drawbacks? More to carry, more airport trouble, one could spend too much time on the computer and not enough observing where one is, and the expense, of course.

For this trip, a laptop would have been nice, as I didn’t actually meet my objective of blogging what we were doing or seeing. It was just too hard to get the writing done in the limited times I had on the machines. A laptop back at the room could have met the need for drafting in closer-to-real-time and also allowed for a chance to review the entry before I post.

Italy in October? I dunno…

A good entry written on the day that something happens has a freshness that the more thought-over posting a few days later doesn’t. And there’s no freshness comparison at all with the entry written a week after returning from the trip. Each has its strengths: immediacy, perspective, and mature consideration, respectively. The real problem with me, though, is that I tend to wait too long for that mature consideration and other things arise to interfere and normal life returns and then I’ve got nothing. Or, at least, nothing that seems very important, anymore. Better to have something, perhaps, even if it reads like the superficial drivel of the sunburned and novelty-sated tourist.

I dunno…

BVI - Tortola, Soper's Hole

We were awakened quite a bit too early for my comfort by a series of excited roosters. Still, it was a beautiful morning and we were soon ready to go. Here's a morning view of the marina from the balcony of our hotel.

We spent the day acclimatizing to the sun and the warm and exploring the little town of Soper's Hole, perched on Frenchman’s Cay and the nearby main island. We found the two groceries, checked in with the charter, Barecat Yacht Charters, and discussing our plans. There were a number of little shops and restaurants and quite a few people about, so it was interesting to just watch people go by. And, frankly, that's about all we had energy for this day.

The Captain and the Librarian and I had breakfast the Blue Parrot. I had the full English breakfast (of course), but the others ordered the rum French toast. All of us were surprised by what it turned out to be – French toast with a shot of syrup and an accompanying shot of rum. When they say rum around here, they mean it!

The Captain likes to find a local soft drink to take along, to keep the body hydrated and the blood sugar going. In St. Vincent, it was Bitter Lemon. He couldn’t get it here (he tried before we left), so here it was Ting. We bought four cases. We also bought a couple of cases of Red Stripe beer, another fine, Jamaican product.

We finished the evening on the deck outside our hotel rooms watching the sun set on Little Thatch Island, outside the harbor.

The next day we got serious about provisioning for the trip. Prices were what you'd expect in a small town on an island with two stores that cater to visitors who can afford to charter sailboats for a holiday. That helped us to avoid a repeat of the over-purchasing that went on in St. Vincent. The Captain and the charter owner went through the orientation while I listened in, while the rest lugged everything to the dock. About noon, the Captain fired up the motors, we cast off, swung downwind, and headed out of the harbor.

British Virgin Islands

Earlier this winter, during the middle of January, we had the wonderful opportunity to visit the British Virgin Islands and spend twelve days sailing on a catamaran. Three of us had done something similar a few years ago, on a bareboat charter out of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. So, we jumped at the chance to do it again, in new waters. I mean, steady wind, warm air, warm water, and going barefoot for days at a time? A no-brainer.

The British Virgin Islands are a collection of mostly volcanic islands, just east of the U. S. Virgin Islands (St. John, St. Thomas, and St. Croix), at the point where the Caribbean archipelago begins to arc southward. They are an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, but are administered independently. They, conveniently, use the U. S. Dollar. With the steady winds, the many islands and harbors, the deep waters, and coral reefs, they are a wonderful cruising ground.

There were five of us: the Captain, the Librarian, the Professor, the Dancer, and me. Sadly, the Captain's mate was unable to accompany us, as her mother took seriously ill just before we left. We thought of her -- and her mother --? frequently. Still, we couldn'?t help ourselves: we had a great time.

The Captain has sailed since he was ten and is the best I'?ve sailed under -- calm and confident. There was more than enough sailing competence on board that we were never under pressure.
The Captain, the Librarian and I flew from SeaTac through Dallas and San Juan, Puerto Rico to Beef Island, BVI, arriving late in the evening. Immigration and customs was simple enough. The taxi driver who usually serves our charter company's customers wasn'?t available (all the other drivers there knew who he was and that he wasn'?t available), so we found a guy who was willing to go that far that late.

We all crammed ourselves and our gear into the van and we headed out on the narrow and surprisingly busy roads. First, over the bridge onto Tortola Island, then through the capital, Road Town (where we dropped off one of the passengers), and continued along the coast to Soper'?s Hole, at the far western end of the island. There was a little confusion about the hotel, as everything was closed, it was dark, and there was no signage. We found it by the note on the door from the Professor and the Dancer, who had arrived earlier from Portland. They very graciously awoke and let us in, where we chattered excitedly about the coming days.

National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissions

We are finished with most of our NARUC meeting activities. The time has gone too fast. We had nine attendees and several guests at our sessions, which is always gratifying. I have a goodly list of things to do and to look at when I get back to work, which is the best reason for coming to these. We talked about Ed's RSS talk this afternoon and agreed that the face-to-face and discussion that followed is so much more effective than any e-mail exchange or Web page viewing, no matter how compelling, could ever be. That's why we come here.

We decided to hold the next meeting, later this year, on our own, in the hopes of some people who can't work their ways up the queue to attend meetings with the rest of their agencies' staff, can attend when it's not with the rest of NARUC. Coeur d'Alene and Seattle were mentioned as possibilities, so I'll start to work up possibilities for a Seattle meeting. It would be nice to pull in some of our staff to present and listen to our colleagues at such a convenient location.

National Museum of the American Indian, DC

I took my free morning and walked down to the Mall to visit the Smithsonian. Overnight, about six inches of snow had fallen, though only three or four inches stuck around the hotel. I'd heard that DC has had trouble with snow removal, but I didn't see any evidence of that today. The streets were clear and there were usable sidewalks the whole way.

On the way, I went a little out of my way to complete a task I'd set myself last fall, when we'd visited Vancouver for a weekend. On the way out of town, we detoured to the airport to see Bill Reid's Spirit of the Haida Gwaii sculpture. It's a wonderful, monumental work, in a dark, jade green. And there's another casting, in black, at the Canadian Embassy, along Pennsylvania Ave. Today, it was covered in snow. The viewing is better in Vancouver, where it's placed in the center of a little amphitheater. Here's is poked into the corner of the courtyard, with rails around it. Still, it's a beautiful, powerful work and I was happy to have seen it again, anew.

Then, I went to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian to see the exhibit of North Pacific Coast peoples. I first visited this new museum last year and I was very impressed. The previous Smithsonian exhibits of Native American articles I'd seen, in the Natural History museum, were hideous.

My favorite museum is the Makah Museum, which I had the chance to visit twice, when my kids were in fifth grade, thanks to Mr. Hickle. I love this little museum because it was built by the people descended from those whose artifacts are preserved and presented in it. I found it beautiful that the articles were described using the words "ours" and "us."

Something of this spirit is retained in the exhibits in the National Museum. The exhibits, in general and in the case of this exhibit of North Pacific Coast peoples, are developed in cooperation with the people's themselves. Visitors might come away realizing that they have missed the "overview" -- the map of the "tribes" and their distribution before so many of them were wiped out. Small loss, in my opinion, when compared against the vitality and real understanding that comes from the people telling their own, distinct stories. Wonderful exhibit in a beautiful building.

From January in the BVI to February in DC

I've let this go too long. I'm working on a description of the trip to the British Virgin Islands; in the meantime, I'll work with where I am now.

I just got into my hotel in Washington, DC, where I'm attending the Winter Meetings of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissions. I'm grateful for the opportunity to occasionally travel to interesting cities in my work for the State of Washington. These meetings are a good chance to catch up with some of my colleagues from other states and learn some useful things from them. DC's a pretty interesting town, too, and I always find something energizing to do.

Just arriving this evening was fun. The first half of the flight was over cloudless country, all the way over the Rockies. The second half was cloudy and, as we approached Washington National, we descended through clouds for what seemed like an hour. It was one of those landings: you couldn't see a thing but clouds, until a couple of hundred feet above the runway, when we popped out into snow falling. That made the walk from the Metro stop to the hotel more interesting than usual.

Off to see the winter...

The winter in the 'Ribbean seas...

We leave tonight for twelve days on a catamaran in the British Virgin Islands. It's a wonderful privilege to be able to do this and a blessing to be going with such good friends. I'll report when I return.