It's a Deck of a day!

I wanted to give everyone an update on the WTF (Where’s the Flamingo International Tour 2016) since arriving in Portland Oregon just over a week ago.  I arrived at my friends, Jan and Nate’s house on Friday evening and enjoyed a nice evening together briefly before everyone headed of for some much needed sleep and me to stretch my back after enduring about 2.5 hours of zero to twenty miles an hour drive through Seattle (reminded me of Atlanta and why I headed to Alaska).  I have other friends here in  Portland I would like to see and spend some time with, Colin and Donna-Lee who I had a great time with in Mexico last Oct/Nov during several celebrations on that trip.

Saturday we headed up toward Mt. Hood, their bee boxes, the bar they own, The Whistle Stop Bar and Grill, and to participate in an annual event called “The Bite at Mt. Hood” a charity event where local vendors prepare food for the guests while both a silent and live auction are held raising money for local charities.  It was a fun evening with about 300 people showing up showing great community support.

The Whistle Stop served smoked sturgeon chowder and bratwursts.  The chowder was the hit of the night as we ran out and had to go back to the bar for more to keep everyone happy.  It was a fun night of serving and interacting with the community and the band played great music all night long. After the event we stayed at the lodge at Mt. Hood so we did not have to drive back that night.  Sunday morning we got up, headed to the bar for breakfast which had a nice local crowd coming in to eat reminding me of a local place in Anchorage called Gwinnie’s.

The weather the next couple of days was overcast and occasional rain but I decided to take on a project of redoing their existing deck around the hot tub.  The existing deck size was 12’ X 16’ and the new design will be 28’ x 16’ with the hot tub, a new fire pit and a trellis over the tub with several built in benches.  Needless to say my original itinerary timeline went out the window but that is what is so interesting with this walkabout.  I am flexible and can make adjustments as I see things along the way.

Yesterday was beautiful and you could see Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, and Mt. St. Helens all snow-capped and beautiful against the blue sky.  I think I will make a side trip and drive to St. Helens to spend a day there to see what it looks like now after the eruption in 1980.  I was very lucky back then as there was a group of us hang glider pilots who had been in Washington for a spring tournament and were driving back to North Carolina and we stopped at Mt. St. Helens to camp overnight and see this beautiful mountain.  We had hoped to find a way to fly from the mountain but the National Park Service would not give us permission like they did at Yosemite.  We camped for the night, stopped by Spirit Lake, met a fascinating old man, Harry Truman who lived there for many years and left for the long drive across country to Grandfather Mountain North Carolina.  That was May 17, 1980 and the next day while driving through Colorado heard the news about the eruption and all the destruction.  It was several months later that I saw the videos and still photos of the devastation for miles in the surrounding areas.  Sitting here yesterday I realized if the south side of the mountain had blown and the force of the event had come this way, it would probably had wiped out all of Portland and the surrounding area towns as it went almost 200 miles blowing down trees and devastating everything in its blast path.

Sorry for getting off on a tangent but it is another reminder of how things work out and how fragile life and living is for everyone.

The deck had to be completely taken apart as Jan and Nate want to lower the existing deck area around the hot tub about four inches requiring it all to come down so I can tear off the ledger board on the house to lower it to the new height.  This will make everything line up with walking out the patio door without a step down to the existing concrete patio deck.  It makes more sense than stepping down then up again to get into the hot tub.

Demo of existing deck boards.

Demo of existing decking.

Area of new deck to be added to the existing deck space over past the patio door.

I will keep posting progress of the deck building and also shortly will write up another on Nate and Jan’s bee hive they recently started.  It is fascinating and I want to do some research on that to write up a blog post on the bees and bee keeping.

Have a nIce day!