Last night, Trish and I were getting ready for bed when we heard something moving about behind the ovens.  We waited for a while, and a deer mouse scurried across our rangetop!  I’ve read quite a bit about rodent intrusion in RVs, but this was our first experience with the problem.  Mice find their way in when the manufacturer hasn’t properly sealed gas, water, or electrical lines where they enter the RV, leaving a gap.  It takes a remarkably small hole for a mouse to get in.

I drove to the nearest store open at 11:30pm, which turned out to be only 12 miles down-mountain in Rhododendron. I bought glue and snapping traps, we baited them with PB&O (peanut butter and oatmeal), and we went to bed.  About an hour later, we awoke to the sounds of the mouse struggling on one of the glue traps.  We swept him out the door, trap and all, and in the morning he had liberated all but his tail from the trap so we helped him finish the job and off he went.  Hopefully he won’t come back!

After Friday’s fishing success, we returned to the lake to try again.  Unfortunately, the fish were not cooperating, but it was a beautiful day, so who cares?

We decided to break out the kayaks for the first time this trip.  The life preservers, which were stored in the rear compartment of one of the kayaks, were a bit wet, so we set them out to dry on the rocks as we got ready to go.

Amazing kayaking ensued:

We found several beaver dams:

I fancied this submerged tree:

After lunch, we headed into the “town” of Government Camp to visit the museum there and to bring home 2 jerry cans of fresh water.  You know it’s time to move on when the sink starts to sputter.  The museum was great, and the town is quaint too:

Upon returning, I re-rode Friday’s Trillium Lake route by myself, cranking out the 4.2 mile course in 22 minutes.  Then Trish and our son rode the route as well.  Despite both of them crashing, they completed the course in 35 minutes.  The bikes have proven themselves to be qualified for light off-road work when paired with their cyclocross wheels, so our “4 bikes, 16 wheels” strategy has worked out well.

While Trish and our son were riding around the lake, our daughter and I drove down to the lake for some fishing at dusk.  We had two bites but didn’t catch anything.  Here’s Mt. Hood as darkness settles in:

Empty freshwater tanks, full wastewater tanks, and the return of cold rainy weather demand that we head out, so we will be heading Southeast towards Bend in central Oregon tomorrow.

We did a nice ride around Trillium Lake today.  There’s a boardwalk that leaves the trail to visit the meadow adjacent to the lake:

The weather was great, and we were treated to fantastic views of Mt. Hood:

Here we are thundering through the woods:

Upon our return, the RV in the distance:

We went back in late afternoon for some fishing.  The kids caught three, and we kept one, a 9” Rainbow Trout.  The views were keepers too:

Gut Shabbos!

Today I rode my bike from the RV up to Timberline Lodge.  It was 2200 feet of climbing over 7 miles:

Trish and the kids drove up to meet me, and we played in the snow.  We had driven from late Autumn at 3400 feet to early Winter at 5600 feet:

Timberline Lodge was a CCC construction project in the 30s:

The fog began to clear and we could see the summit of Mt. Hood, 6000 feet above us:

We decided to go snow shoeing.  Once we were a bit away from the parking lot, all we could see was the mountain:

Returning to the RV, we were surprised to see that it’s still Autumn down here!

When we first arrived, the kids found a see-saw someone had built out in the woods:

Here we are on our private (and abandoned) airstrip. The inconvenience of having no-one to bother for a cup of sugar is more than compensated for by the peace and quiet:

Today was our first day of home schooling.  Our son and I did a math exersize to figure out how many mishnas we would have to learn daily to complete the entire Mishna by his bar mitzvah.  We then learned the first 12 mishnas.

Here’s our daughter working on her math:

After lunch, we headed out to do some letterboxing.  We found four of them in short order:

At the last letterboxing site there was a sign explaining the view.  This can only be described as typical Oregon weather:

Tomorrow we’re supposed to get the first sunny day in the last two weeks, so hopefully we will actually be able to see the mountain itself.