Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I wrote the other day that a coworker sent me a Christmas gift of a bottle of whiskey... that turns out to be a $200 bottle. Seeing the price gave me pause because I don't buy liquor that expensive for myself. Okay, I have split bottles of wine in restaurants that have run well past $200, but that's with restaurant markup. I figure the price at a good discount liquor store like Total Wine would be anywhere from 1/3 to as little as 1/5 of that. And it's at Total Wine that that bottle of whiskey goes for $209.99. At BevMo it's $226.

The price of the gift wasn't the only shocker I saw when I looked up details on it. My search for "Yamazaki whiskey" (Yamazaki is the producer) turned up the deets on this old friend:

Yamazaki 12 year single malt is a Japanese whiskey I discovered umpteen years ago when I started traveling to Japan and was first exploring whiskey. I say discovered because back then, in the late 00s, Japanese whiskey was not common in the US. The first few bottles I bought— including one that was a gift for a colleague who'd helped me from Sunnyvale on a project, staying up late working until midnight a few nights to sync time zones with me in Tokyo— I bought in Ginza and hand-carried home on my NRT-SFO flight.

I was a few years ahead of the curve on Japanese whiskeys. The first bottles I brought home were novel even to my few friends who were whiskey fans. One had dozens of bottles of whiskey on his shelf at home, and this was new to him.

Within a few years Japanese whiskey got popular in the US. I was able to buy Yamazaki 12 at places like BevMo. The price was still reasonable, at first... $35, about the same as I paid at a liquor store Tokyo, adjusting for exchange rate.

But then Japanese whiskeys got stupid popular in the US. Actually, all whiskey got popular. In the early/mid '10s in the US whiskey had become the "it" drink. And Japanese whiskey became what the self-styled whiskey sophisticates drank to show the whiskey mass-market drinkers how they were more sophisticated because they'd already gone beyond the traditional Scotch and Irish whiskeys everyone else was celebrating. Soon the mass market drinkers wanted in on Japanese whiskey, too. The result was the comparatively small Japanese production houses sold out so much of their liquor that age-statement whiskeys like Yamazaki 12 became extremely rare.

Long story short: The Yamazaki 12 year is now a $200 bottle, too!

I wish I'd bought a few more bottles when they were $35. Alas I only have the one, and there are only maybe two shots left in it. I'll have to drink them with intention.

Once I saw how much the price of Yamazaki 12 year had inflated I was curious about another, even more expensive Japanese whiskey I also picked up umpteen years ago.



This Hibiki 17 year was about $85 when I bought it in Japan in 2010. That was the most expensive bottle I'd bought up to that point. Adjusting for inflation it'd be $125 today, which is still more than I've paid for any bottle. But inflation is not the only story here.

As with the Yamazaki 12, Suntory sold so much Hibiki when it was stupid-popular that they sold out most of their back-stock. Hibiki 17 has been discontinued. Bottles now sell for $800+. 😳

"Where's the beef?" actress Clara Peller famously barked in a series of Wendy's TV commercials back in the 1980s. The commercials were such a success that the line became part of the cultural lexicon for years after. Kids would repeat it to each other and laugh, sort of like kids today do with "6-7", except that "Where's the beef?" had an actual, clear source— one that adults could understand, too. Well, I've been repeating the phrase again this past week, though with a bittersweet chuckle this time. The Wendy's restaurants in Sunnyvale are now gone!

It was in the news a few weeks ago that Wendy's is closing approximately 300 underperforming restaurants across the US. This comes after closing about 150 restaurants in 2024. (Example news coverage: CBS News article, 17 Nov 2025)

The last remaining Wendy's in Sunnyvale seems to have been part of this wave. The restaurant shut down sometime in the past week or two, I think. It's a few miles away and in a part of town I rarely traverse.

For a long time we had a Wendy's restaurant closer to home, just 1 mile away, on a street I regularly drive. In fact it used to be just around the corner from a spot where I worked for a few years!

That shop closed up during Covid, presumably a casualty of reduced business. The property changed hands, and they bulldozed the restaurant and put a bright, new Taco Bell in its spot. I've eat there once since then, just to remind myself Yeah, Taco Bell is kind of gross. 🤣

So anyway, now when I'm in the mood for a Dave's Old-Fashioned, I've got to travel miles to get one. A quick check on Google Maps shows there are four Wendy's still standing in San Jose, a couple in Fremont, and one up in Redwood City.

I'm not going to go that far for a Dave's Old-Fashioned, though. The main reason is they're just not that good anymore.

Oh, I used to love me a ¼-pound single combo years ago. Back in college, for example, a new Wendy's opened on a busy corner near where I lived the last 3 semesters there. It was right on my walk to/from classes. I ate there easily a few times a week. And it was good. Other Wendy's since then just haven't been as good. Even when that other Wendy's in Sunnyvale was right around the corner from my office, I ate there maybe once a month at most. And the one that just closed? I ate there back in March and was disappointed. The food was expensive, employees blocked off the cash register with a self-ordering kiosk, then they made my food wrong, and they barely cared.

Sometimes there's a reason businesses fail. I mean, there's always a reason, but a lot of the time it's not the macro trends that business owners routinely cite— things like the economy, Covid-19, inflation, minimum wage being raised, the skyrocketing divorce rate, or my favorite stupid excuse, "Millennials Are Killing the XYZ Industry". Sometimes, probably much of the time, the call is coming from inside the house!

Oh, you might still be wondering about that Where's the Beef? meme I mentioned at the start. Here's the infamous Wendy's TV commercial from 1984:



Enjoy!

Thanksgiving triplog #8
Manassas, VA · Mon, 24 Nov 2025. 3:30pm.

We're back at the hotel now, between episodes of eating our way through friends and family. Earlier today we met old friends for lunch in Arlington; this evening we'll meet one of my cousins and his wife for dinner in South Riding. South Riding is a place-name I never knew existed, and I grew up not far from here! But more on that later.

My sister said something yesterday that bothers me. It's about her kids. During our pleasant day together full of verbal repartee I teased her gently about how difficult it was for us to buy graduation gifts for her older two kids.

One of them we'd asked several times what he wanted for a graduation gift without getting a response. We could've just bought him something but didn't want to risk (a) duplicating a gift from someone else or (b) buying him something expensive he didn't actually like or want. And (c) we didn't want to give a gift as impersonal as "Here's a wad of cash".

Ultimately, 9 months later, he responded to us and asked for a new phone. It was clear from his asking that his mother had put him up to it. That's what I was teasing C. about— "When P. asked us for that phone, it's because he complained to you that his phone broke and you told him to soak his rich uncle and aunt for a new one, right?"

This wasn't just teasing C. about her kids, though. The topic of graduation gfits is topical because one of P's younger brothers, J., will be graduating in 6-7 months. And given how long it took to get an answer from P., we figured we'd better start asking J. now. Including asking his mom what he needs. 🤨

"My kids are reluctant to ask for things," she explained. She hypothesized that it comes from when the family was struggling harder and material goods were in short supply. Oh, the kids always had a roof over their head, and adequate food, and two pairs of shoes without holes, she assured me. But they learned the answer to "Can we have?" other things was No. So the kids stopped asking.

I recognize part of the dynamic. I was raised in similar conditions. Money was tight, and while we always had a roof over our heads— though at least once my parents came close to not being able to pay the mortgage—and food on the table, other things were luxuries. Including shoes. While C is happy her kids always had two good pairs of shoes, one sneakers and one dress-up for going to church, I usually only had one pair. And half the time they had holes.

Where it gets worse (sadder) with C's kids, though, is that they've internalized guilt over wanting better things. While I never accepted that holey sneakers are all I deserved in life, or that it was wrong to want sneakers without holes, that's what C's kids are seeming to do. She gave the example of how one of them said he didn't want braces because they'd be too expensive for Mom and Dad to afford. It's great that young kids are learning about making tradeoffs in life, but accepting crooked teeth because you think braces— like every other kid in school gets— is too much to ask for is sad.

Again, I recognize part of the dynamic here. I recognize it because I lived it. And because I lived it I'm pretty sure those kids came up with this internalized guilt all on their own.

My father tried to instill guilt in me by telling me I was greedy. I was greedy for wanting nice gifts for my birthday. I was greedy for wanting a second pair of shoes— without holes. I was greedy for wanting a bigger slice of pizza at dinner. I was greedy even for asking that we get pizza when Dad asked the family, "Where should we go out for dinner tonight?" The proper thing to do, according to my dad, would've been to keep quiet until everyone else stated an opinion, and only then ask for what I want.

The difference was, that bullshit guilt trip only half worked on me. I mean, I never did stop believing I should ask for what I want. I did internalize some guilt around it, though. Even into my 40s there were times I felt bad about saying, "I would like XYZ for dinner" because I feared— through internalized guilt— that expressing my want was wrong because other people want things, too, and somehow when multiple people want things my wants are wrong. 🙄

Well, we didn't come to an answer for what J. might like for his graduation next year.

Or maybe it'll be paying his parents back for his braces. 🙁

It's time for another chapter in the story mystery of the church up the hill. This is now part 3 of the story. Originally I had thought I'd be able to fit it all in one journal entry but as I started writing the story it grew. It grew first from one blog to three. Then as I took a slight detour into writing about AI and photography in part 2 I realized the story will take 4, maybe 5, chapters to complete.

As I noted in the previous chapter, my dad lost his job when I was a little kid. The retail chain he worked for went out of business.



Dad's job wasn't a great job. The hours were brutal. As a store manager he was salaried, not hourly, so he didn't get paid for his extra work. And extra work was required every time a store employee called in sick and no substitute could be found, and every time there was a break-in afterhours and the alarm company and the police called. The way my mom told the story, years later, break-in attempts happened regularly, like at least once a month. The store was in a rough neighborhood.

Dad's job wasn't a great job, but at least it paid the bills. I think. Then he lost the job, with little or warning.

This was the mid 1970s. As I noted in the previous chapter, the economy sucked. Technically the US had just pulled out of its worst recession since the Great Depression, but hiring had not yet resumed. I imagine younger folks today who lived through the jobless recovery of the Great Recession in the late 00s understand the pattern.

Speaking of younger generations and modern patterns, my parents in the mid 1970s did something that's familiar to a younger generation today: they hustled. With "real" jobs not really hiring, my parents both took on whatever odd jobs they could find. Between hustling and scrimping and borrowing, they kept a roof over our heads and food on the table.



This is where some of my earliest memories meld in with the stories my parents later told. Oddly I don't remember my parents being stressed around that time, or unhappy. Probably that's because I was too young to recognize such emotions. It could also be that my parents hid their stress and worries well from us younger kids. One snapshot memory I do have from back then is my parents giving each other a high five when my mom said, "We did it! We paid the mortgage this month."

I also have early memories of some of the jobs my parents did during that time of hustling. My mom started selling Tupperware. Many of my earliest memories are of riding with her in the car as she drove back and forth to the Tupperware warehouse. We'd return with a suitcase full of products she'd sell via Tupperware parties.



I wish I could say that Tupperware was how my parents pulled out of the economic nosedive after my dad lost his job. I wish I could say that Tupperware was how my mom built  a lasting and fulfilling career as an entrepreneur— which was part of the Women's Liberation pitch Tupperware was making back in the 1970s. Alas, I'm not sure my mom ever made any money with Tupperware.

That's because Tupperware was, for many years, a multi-level marketing (MLM) organization. In MLMs most distributors make very little money. See Wikipedia's Tupperware page, for example.

Mom stopped selling Tupperware after a short period of time. Likely that's because she netted little or no money after a lot of work— work planning and presenting at Tupperware parties, hustling to get people to place orders (remember, in a tough economy), then having to pick up & deliver the orders once they were shipped to the local warehouse. But while the dream of making it a sustainable career disappeared quickly, the Tupperware itself did not. Mom bought a number of pieces herself, because they were useful. And they lasted. The bright, 1970s vintage colors and those fluted lids were a mainstay in our house for many years after.

To be continued....

I grew up in a neighborhood where there was a church up the hill. It wasn't right next to our house but it was a short walk away. Go up to the corner, turn left, go to the end of the cul-de-sac, then follow the walkway behind one of the houses up to the church lot. It was close enough that by the time I was 8, my younger sister and I could ride our bicycles up there. ...But not on Sundays. For even though it was a church of our religion, the religion my father had been born into and almost dedicated his life to the priesthood of, we almost never attended that church. Instead my parents took us to another church of the same faith a 20 minute car ride away.



Why didn't we attend our own neighborhood church? It was so close a child could handle the walk. Indeed, I remember occasionally seeing some of our neighbors walking to or from late Sunday morning services when the weather was nice. But we virtually never joined them. Instead we piled into the family car and drove to another church virtually nobody in our town had heard of.

This church nestled among the mature trees in our neighborhood was unusual in our town. In our town, built almost entirely by a single developer starting in the mid 1960s, all the other churches were on the main roads into/out of town. That made them easy to drive to; they were on major roads with high speed limits. But there was no weekly parade of neighborhood faithful walking to or from services, because those churches were on high-speed roads with no sidewalks— next to the strip malls. "Centrally located!" I'm sure the 1960s suburban planners touted. But their design also made them centrally isolated. Except our neighborhood's church.

"Why don't we go to the church up the hill?" I asked my parents numerous times when I was a child.

"Urrrarrughh," was my father's reply— when he'd reply at all. It was a guttural grumble, a nonverbal answering indicating that the conversation was over.

A few times my mother answered. "Your father doesn't like the way they celebrate there," she explained. "It's too modern."

"What's different— or wrong— with the way they celebrate mass?" I wondered, sometimes out loud. But usually silently, because there was low tolerance for badgering questions when I was a little kid. Keep asking after a nonverbal Urrrarrughh answer and the next answer might be a nonverbal swat with his right hand.

Now, since we did occasionally attend a service at that church, occasionally as in once every year or two, I did see how they're different. Or, rather, how they're not.

They were both Catholic churches. There's a not a huge amount of difference in how they celebrate Sunday services. The Catholic church's strong central hierarchy sees to that. When we were on vacations hundreds of miles away we could drop in to a church, and the service would be immediately familiar. Oh, the physical building might look newer or older, there might be old-fashioned wooden pews and maybe even a pipe organ; but the content of the worship was word-for-word virtually the same. The same format, the same readings, the same prayers at the same times. So what was so unacceptably different about the church up the hill?



It's too modern. That three word phrase was the only meaningful answer I heard for a dozen or more years. And yet it was also absurdly meaning-less as there was so little different between the two churches. The only nominally "modern" thing I could spot in the church we avoided is that it had a younger core of volunteer musicians who led the congregation in songs. And among the instruments they played was... gasp!... an acoustic guitar.

Nobody else played an acoustic guitar in a Catholic church. Nobody. Especially not at the totally-not-modern church my father preferred. There they played only the one instrument that was common in the time of Jesus Himself. The electric organ.

Haha, yes, I'm being tongue-in-cheek with that. But seriously, the choices of instruments was the only material difference I could spot. And as far as differences go, it was pretty darn close to immaterial. The "modern" church sang the same songs with same appropriate reverence.

Years later, decades later, I learned the truth about why my father refused to take us to the "modern" church. As you might suspect when the stated reason is so vacuous, so readily disproven by easily observed fact, the real reason is quite different from the stated one. And often the real reason is shameful for the person offering the dissembling answer to admit— which is why they dissemble and distract instead. The real reason we didn't attend the church up the hill is my father felt shame going there.


To be continued....

Buzzfeed had a listicle in my newsfeed this evening, "People Who Work Night Shifts Are Sharing Things "Day Shifters" Don't Understand About Their World, And As A Day Shifter, I'm Intrigued". I'm a sucker for Buzzfeed listicles (lists of pithy responses in Reddit threads that are turned into articles) and I worked second shift for three summers years ago, so I figured, Hey, I'll play! Here are Five Things of mine:

1) Second Shift requires some adaptation. The second, or "swing", shifts I worked were 5pm-midnight, 5-11pm, or 4pm-midnight. The exact hours varied by job and year to year within one of the jobs (the company changed its hours). Working second shift puts you out of sync with the rest of society, though not as badly as third shift. That's because I could still manage daytime hours for appointments, shopping, etc... though it did take more careful planning and some adaptation. For example, if I wanted to go out for "dinner" at a restaurant, it was at 3:30pm before work. My effective dinner, after getting off work, was almost always some cooked straight out of the freezer at home at 1-2am. Virtually nothing was open after midnight, nor even really after 10pm, in the places I lived.

2) Second shift can be busy... or quiet. In one job I worked, a call center, the whole department was staffed during second shift, meaning there were a few dozen employees plus 2-3 managers. Second shift there entailed constant, steady work. Though the rest of the company was dark at those hours... so breaks in the lunch room or outside the front door were alwasy eerily quiet. At the other job I worked I was there as part of a 24x7 rotation in case something went wrong. And since I was the only person there for most of my shift, either it was something basic I could diagnose and repair on my own, or I documented and left it for the fully staffed M-F 8-5 crew.

3) You can't come home and go straight to bed. One of the biggest things people misunderstand about working second shift is thinking, "Oh, it's just 'til 11 or 12, that's like a slightly late evening." NO IT'S NOT! It's not "just like a slightly late evening" because when you get off shift and arrive home at midnight or almost 1am, you can't just go straight to bed. You're up. You've been working. You need a few hours to wind down before you can sleep! I was routinely going to bed at 3 in the morning. Sometimes, if I got involved in reading a book after work, I'd be up until 6am.

4) Switching shifts is hard. The third year I worked second shifts, I did that 3-4 nights a week and also had 1-2 days of first shift on the weekends. Switching 1st to 2nd wasn't hard, but going from 2nd to 1st always messed up my schedule. I'm glad I was young when I did that.

5) I was warned off working third shifts. Not that I ever considered shift work after summer jobs in college, but one of the third-shifters at the 24x7 place I worked was a quiet warning. There were two guys who worked the 11pm-9am shift, Ross and Gene. Ross had only been doing it for a year or two; he was hard up in a slow economy, and the work paid well. But Gene had always been working third shift. He looked to be 60... but one night during our shift overlap he and I were discussing his plan to go back to college to finish his degree, and I learned he was only 40. The man clearly looked 60! Everyone around the office whispered, "Yeah, you age fast working third shift!"

Saturday was a day for wine tasting at two wineries. After visiting David Bruce Winery with my friend Anthony and I drove up along Skyline Boulevard to Thomas Fogarty Winery in the mountains of Woodside, California.



It's with a bit of irony I say it was a day for vistiing two wineries. Initially my plan had been to visit three!  I'd made reservations (yes, reservations are all but required nowadays) for David Bruce at 1pm, Byington at 2, and Thomas Fogarty at 4. Already it was 1:15 as we were halfway through our first of five samples at David Bruce. I could tell there was no way we'd get to Byington anywhere close to 2pm. So I canceled the appointment with Byington and figured we'd stretch out our time at David Bruce, leaving plenty of time to get to Thomas Fogarty. It turned out we got there just in time, arriving a few minutes after our 4pm reservation..

My plan of visiting three wineries in the afternoon wasn't unreasonable... or even aggressive. It was just... not the way it works anymore. Years ago wine tastings were done at a bar in a tasting room. Tasting coordinators served like bartenders and poured one tasting after another. Get 'em in, get 'em out was the operating philosophy back then.

On my countless wine tasting trips in the past, visiting only three wineries in one afternoon seemed like taking it easy. A few times I managed to visit 5 wineries in a day with a bit of planning ahead, such as visiting in and around Sonoma's Alexander Valley.  At least once I even managed 6 tasting visits in a day. But that was with the get-'em-in, get-'em-out style of service. Now many wineries have moved toward an "experience" model of wine tasting where they sit you down on a well manicured terrace while a server pours one small glass of wine at a time to savor along with the views. It's nice in that it now matches the ever-rising tasting fees that wineries charge.



Saturday, though, Anthony and I embraced the slower model of service. After I canceled our 2:00 with Byington we relaxed on the terrace at David Bruce, letting them define the speed of service. We wound up staying there not just past 1:50pm when we otherwise would've had to jet to make it to Byington just up the road but actually until 3:15 when we had to jet just to make it to Thomas Fogarty!

Again at Thomas Fogarty we enjoyed the relaxed pace of service, chatting amiably on the terrace in between sips of two different wine flights. We didn't finish there until after 5:45pm. We were hurried just a bit at the end as we were the last customers there.

As for the wines? Well, it's ironic that Thomas Fogarty is a local winery I've been meaning to visit for over 25 years. And now that I've finally gotten there, I found the wines all forgettable. Oh, they were good wines, but they weren't amazing— the eye-popping scores in the menu notwithstanding. And they were all priced like amazing wines, with the cheapest starting at about $60 and the priciest an even $100.

The wine that I found the most memorable was not for its taste but its place. The glass I'm holding in the photo above is a pinot noir from grapes grown on the hilltop right beyond the terrace. With the winemaking operation being in the building right behind me I quipped out loud, "The grapes in this glass haven't moved more than 200 feet since they were born!"

How's that for "farm to table"? I've got your MF table right next to your MF farm. 🤣



After the tasting we finished the day by continuing the drive along Skyline Boulevard. Anthony was oohing and aahing the whole way as he'd never ridden in a convertible before. At the 35/84 junction we pulled aside across from Alice's Restaurant to call Hawk to coordinate dinner. Then we drove down Woodside Road to I-280 and into Palo Alto to meet Hawk and Amy (Anthony's wife) for dinner at Palo Alto Sol. Delicious enchiladas and margaritas.... It was a great ending to a great day.

There's a meme that when you were a kid, getting to eat at McDonald's was a treat; but now, as an adult, it's a fail. I was reminded of that last night when I ate at a McDonald's. It was my first time eating at one in over a year, I think. And it reminded me why I eat there less than once a year now.

First, a brief stroll down memory lane. When I was a kid, a family visit to McDonald's once every week or two was a treat. There were actually other fast food restaurants I liked better, but while I grumbled I never said "No" to the golden arches.

When I turned 17 and was more able to choose where to dine— as I was more often doing it on my own and not on my parents' dime— I steered away from McDonald's because of their racist advertising and their ability to rot the brains of my friends and all my younger sisters. Just mention the word "McDonald's" in a conversation, and they'd break out in song with one of the advertising jingles. It was like kids had been turned into  kids those dolls with a string on their back you could pull to make them say a recorded line. Or Pavlov's dogs slobbering at the chime of a bell.

But it wasn't all fast food I was frustrated about, just McDonald's. My last two years of college, for example, there was a Wendy's near my house that I ate at a few times a week. So the meme of then-vs-now still holds when read as "Going to a fast food restaurant" vs. specifically "Going to McDonald's."

But there's also an aspect to the then-vs-now comparison in which McDonald's, specifically, is a fail. I experienced that when I ate at one last night.

Put simply, McDonald's in nowhere near as enjoyable as it used to be. The food just isn't as good. The meat patties in the burgers look and taste like what school lunch cafeteria burgers used to be. Their look and texture both scream "filler", and the texture and taste both say "Cooked somewhere else, then reheated here."

The ordering experience is a fail, too. McDonald's steers customers heavily to ordering via computerized kiosks instead of from a human. I wrote a few years ago about how frustrating using McDonald's ordering kiosks is. Four years later it hasn't improved any. In fact it's gotten subjectively worse because now there's the concern the company is applying AI to manipulate the choices and prices presented to us in the menu to get us to spend more.

Finally, the whole customer experience at McDonald's is irritating— if you're savvy to the signs of cost-cutting. The ordering kiosks are one element of it. McDonald's wants to be able to staff fewer people relative to the number of orders, and eliminate the need for training humans to handle the complexity of taking orders from customers.

Then there's the recent removal of the self-serve soda fountains. Years ago they became commonplace as fast food restaurants sought to eliminate one of the tasks that took up employees' time. Now corporate has decided that self-serve refills let people drink too much, so they've moved it back behind the counter— where, BTW, drink filling is now completely automated. An employee just presses one button and everything— new cup, ice, filled with soda— is done by a robot.

The final insult is the signs in the dining room informing customers that there's a 20 minute limit to eat our food and get out. I know, this is a case of we-can't-have-nice-things because a small number of bad actors wrecked it for the rest of us. Like, I imagine corporate felt there were too many people buying a $1 cup of coffee and camping out at a table for 4 hours slurping up unlimited self-serve refills. But, gosh, what if I have an hour for my lunch break and would like to spend 40 minutes not just eating my food slowly but also relaxing while I read news and social media for a bit before returning to work. Lingering just a bit over lunch, when my schedule permits, has always been one of my little pleasures. Now the Man is warning me, "Don't make me tap the sign!"

Oregon Cascades Travelog #11
Blue Lake OR - Wed, 2 Jul 2025, 6:30pm

According to our map on AllTrails, it was going to be an uphill climb from Lower Proxy Falls to the upper falls. Up, up, all the way; the steepest uphill on the trail. Well, aside from the off-trail climbing we did getting back up to the trail after climbing over logs and walking through water to see Lower Proxy Falls from its base, it was basically flat on the way to Lower Proxy Falls. In fact, the last little bit was gently downhill. AllTrails was out to lunch.

One thing I always enjoy about the Pacific Northwest, especially the Cascade Mountains, is how we're so often surrounded by huge trees.

I grew up in a neighborhood where a stand of old growth trees remained behind our house. It's almost unheard of today to have old growth trees in a suburban neighborhood. Developers bulldoze the entire plat for simplicity, build houses, and maybe plant a few saplings in the yard. But we had a few mature trees in our yard plus a stand of untouched forest behind us.

As a kid I always the view from our back yard of the tall, straight trees behind the house. But those were East Coast trees. They only seemed tall relative to my diminutive size. The tallest one, a looming Black Walnut, probably wasn't much more than 80' tall. But compared to everything else, and compared to me, it seemed huge. Out here in the PNW the commonest tree is the Douglas Fir, which easily grows to 200'+. It's humbling to feel so dwarfed by nature. It throws me back to my childhood sense of wonder.

It was just as well that the trail to Upper Proxy Falls was gently because Hawk and I were seriously flagging. It had been a long day, going on 6pm already as we wound down the last bit to the base of the falls.



Upper Proxy Falls was both pretty and a disappointment. Pretty, because, well, look at it. 😅 And yet also a disappointment because it was shrouded by so many trees and didn't seem to have a big, main tier anywhere but just a series of steep cascades.

Two groups of hikers arrived practically on our heels. One pair were the gal and guy who said "Yeah, no" when we told them about our adventure getting to the bottom of Lower Proxy Falls. They were content to admire these falls from across the pond at the bottom.

Another trio of hikers were young women who immediately started climbing a faint trail up the hill to the right of the falls. It seemed their goal was to get about 1/3 of the way up— that's as far as any of them got before them stopped, anyway— and take Instagram pictures (or is it TikTok videos nowadays?) of themselves in one of the larger cascades with water pouring over their heads. I timed my photos for when they were standing behind trees so they wouldn't ruin my Instagram-worthy pictures. 😂

After this Hawk and I hiked back up the slight rise from the bottom of the falls and the finished the loop back down to the parking lot. I honestly don't remember a lot about the hike from that point, other than that it was down at the end. We're both tired enough that we fell into the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other mindset, kind of block out other things around us. Now we're back at the car, resting for a moment before beginning the drive home over the McKenzie Pass to Bend on the other side of the Cascades.

Update: But wait, there's more! An unexpected hike appeared on the way home, when we thought we were too tired! Stay tuned....

One of the enjoyable things about June is the days are long. Sunset the past few weeks has been around 8:30pm... which means there's still light in the sky until 9. Sadly, the past few weeks I haven't always been able to enjoy it. Half the time I've been tired early and gone to bed while there's still light in the sky. Thursday evening I even laid down for sleep at 8:30, before actual sunset, I was so tired.

Curiously it reminds me of a snapshot memory I have from my childhood. I remember one night I was going to bed at my 9pm bedtime, and when I looked out the window it was still daytime! There was light in the sky with which I could see across our yard, to the street beyond, to the houses across the street and the woods behind them. "How was it still daytime at 9pm that one time?" my child brain wondered for the next few years as I never caught the same perfect alignment of date and time again. Well, now I've seen it again. And sadly it's like I've come full circle. As I'm getting older I'm back to needing a 9pm bedtime some nights. 😔