Hello my loves. I'm currently in Oregon as I write this on a trip to perform and bring you some of the adventures of the summertime.
Road tripping is one of my three most favorite things in life, the other two being walking through forests and making music. There is something about packing you car or van with what I need and just going with no agenda or schedule and let spontaneity take over. I’m on one such road trip at the moment. It’s a short one to Oregon. I’m here to perform for the oldest didgeridoo festival outside of Australia called Northwest Didge Fest. This is a gathering of didgeridoo players from all over the world to come and celebrate, play, learn and perform on the didgeridoo, which is considered the world’s oldest wind instrument. This will be my 15th year attending the festival about the 14th year I’ll be performing and it’s something I look forward to every year! I drove down a few days ago because I felt that instead of just driving down, going to the festival and then driving back home, I thought I would take a few extra days and make a real road trip out of it.
What I look like taking a photo @ Minto-Brown Island Park, Salem, Oregon
I love taking these extra days because it gives me a chance to really explore an area, instead of rush through. For example, yesterday afternoon I went to Minto-Brown Island Park for a short walk among the tall maple and cottonwood trees. If you’ve never been among cottonwoods, you get a sense of giant they are. Even the youngest trees are huge! Their presence is truly formidable. It filled my soul to walk among these giants. So different from the cedars, firs and hemlocks that I’m used to at home on the Olympic Peninsula. As my walk ended, I was getting a little hungry so I stopped at a local sushi place and got a to-go order and took it to Riverfront Park where I had a sunset dinner. It was a beautiful evening, cool with just the right amount of clouds to make a beautiful evening sky. I walked across the foot bridge to the east end of the island where I had never been before and photographed some of the wildflowers and took video clips of sunset. Some of these clips also captured the crickets that live down here. Perhaps while I’m here, I will pull out my field recorder and see if I can record some of these crickets for an effects library I’ve been building.
While I’m here, I’m hoping to get to more of the parks and forests outside of Salem. There is one in particular I would love to go to while I’m here which is Silver Falls State Park. This is a park I’ve been to before but always love going to because of the many waterfalls that are there plus the beautiful deep forest of the area.
Today, however, I have to find a pair of headphones to replace the ones I’ve been using. Unfortunately, the ones I have now are broken where the right earpiece bends outward (which its not supposed to do) and makes monitoring while I’m mixing music and videos more difficult.
That’s about it for now m’ dears. I’ve been working on a vlog video to post on my Youtube channel about this trip and hope to have it up by the end of the month. Vlogging has been such a challenge for me in the past but I’m not giving up on it! I want to bring you in on the back stories as they happen so I’m determined to keep moving forward on this! Until then take care and sending you lots of love. To be continued……
Pam
Below are some of the many photos I took at Minto-Brown Island Park. Enjoy!
Willamette River - East end of Minto-Brown Island Park
Some of the beautiful landscape of Minto-Brown Island
Oxbow Slough - Minto-Brown Island
Minto Brown Island foot bridge - East end
Foot bridge at sunset
One of the many bridges the span over waterways on the island
Life and death on the island - I believe these were left over from a predator hunt
Some of the beautiful flowers I found - looking to identify these
Also looking to identify these
Queen Anne's Lace flower