Occupation of Independence

 Many people probably like camping because it helps them appreciate things they take for granted.  At the top of my list are things like window screens, refrigerated foods, a breeze in summer, and a non-breeze in winter. Another top contender is the gravel road.  You have to experience a bit of rain on an unimproved dirt road before you learn how frustrating it can be.  In the 1800s our ancestors probably experienced several months of muddy roads that were impassable to wheeled vehicles (wagons).  They probably thought mid-winter was a relief because at least the roads were passable. Recently I have witnessed a truly impressive amount of road improvement.   There is more to improving a gravel road than just smacking down some new gravel.  You need drainage ditches on both sides of the road a few feet lower than the road surface; every creek or swale needs a culvert, that is, a drainage pipe underneath the roadway; the surface needs to crowned or banked; the gravel should have sharp cor

"Unboxing" this or that is a standard title for a You Tube video these days.  I am not really sure how this managed to become a standard meme on the internet.  But don't worry -- I won't jump on that bandwagon.  Still, it brought a smile to my face when I was surprised by a flower that is rare around here, right now, and I thought of a video entitled, "Unboxing a White Flower..."   Oregon Trail country in eastern Oregon is not flower country, right now at least.  But I appreciate flowers when they are rare: Goodbye to the old trail, for awhile: And hello to my new laptop.  I was amazed at how easy it was to set it up, but then jinxed myself by exulting over it in a message to a friend.  Then I hit a brick wall: it would not let me switch out of Windows 11 Home "S mode."  (This step had been easy for past computers.) You can imagine the futility of trying to get some "Support" from a company like Microsoft.  I even started looking at Chrom

I have been thinking about doing more videos for this blog.  There are only so many things that are actually fun to watch: a raptor dive-bombing a prairie dog, a herd of horses blasting across a grassy field, a dog running in slow-motion as in a dog food commercial, or a sexy lady walking down a sidewalk in high heels.   And yet there are certainly a lot of videos out there.  Many of them use a standard trick of the movie industry: they make the camera move to hide the fact that nothing interesting is actually happening.  Or they just give up and stick a talking head in front of the camera. That is why I appreciated a windy day recently near the Oregon Trail: the grass was only a foot or so high, but it was fine in texture, so the wave motion was lovely.  My little dog and I were revisiting her favorite sand dune.  When I saw this I had to smile: I smiled because of something Thoreau had once written, in "Walden."  Normally his mind worked like a still-photographer instead of

 More practice at posting via phone, because my laptop is dead: Another photo close to the Oregon Trail.  It pleases me that this part of history actually has an effect on me.  And perhaps that makes sense for a dispersed camper and mountain biker. But other parts of history also seemed interesting to me, but perhaps unimpressive to other people? For instance, the little dog and I were mountain biking on a rather straight dirt road, and found this old wooden bridge:  It was quite a bridge in its day, say, two generations later than the Oregon Trail itself.  Perhaps it shouldn't have surprised me so much;  after all, the name of the dirt road was 'Old Post Road.' The area had one more pleasant surprise for me, one more manifestation of the 'old historic road' idea: I ended up camping near a mile of 'old highway', shown below. I was surprised by the yellow paint.  This old highway lapsed into non-use after World War II perhaps. How can we explain the appeal of