Monday, October 23, 2006 Mt. Hood, OR

We've been ensconced in the town of Mt. Hood for five days now. On Thursday we took a drive up to Cloud Cap on Mt. Hood at the 6,000 ft level. We stopped by the Cloud Cap Lodge where we were married in 1992 http://mounthoodhistory.com/Buildings/cloudcapinn.html. The lodge is maintained by the Crag Rats and there were a bunch of guys there cleaning up fallen logs and preparing the lodge for winter. The Crag Rats are a service organization made up of grizzled mountain guys. They conduct search and rescue operations of fallen mountain climbers and lost hikers.

Our furniture and a plethora of boxes arrived in Portland while we were gone, so on Saturday we rented the U-haul and with the help of two very helpful men, moved our stuff from Portland to a storage unit in beautiful Odell, Oregon. I had to laugh with embarrassment when I ready this little description of the town of Odell, "This is a well-known community in the middle Hood River Valley. It was named for William Odell, who settled nearby as early as 1861 and whose son, Milton D. Odell, was the first white child born in the valley. Roswell Shelley started a store at Odell and applied the present name. William Odell was a native of Tennessee. Milton Odell was born in 1863." The town is really just a grouping of a grocery store, a gas station, a coffee place, a barber shop, and a Mexican restaurant. I had my first and brief waitressing experience in Odell working at the Huckleberry Cafe.

It really is beautiful here and each morning when we go for our 5-mile walk, we're reminded of why we're here. The fall colors are spectacular, Mt. Hood oversees all of our actions, and the smell of the pines is sweet and clean. At night we listen to coyotes calling and have heard elk bugling. We've heard rumors of a herd of about 40 elk in the field next to us and I plan on getting up earlier and searching them out for the next few mornings.