Caches and Murals
Today we decided to hang around Silverton for the day. The skies were grey and cloudy at first, but then the sun broke through, and it turned into a glorious day.
We started out by driving to the Gordon House, for two reasons. It is the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oregon, and the only one open to the public in the Pacific Northwest. (Except this house wasn't open today...appointments only...so we could only walk around the outside and marvel at the architecture.)
Also, Harris found our first geocache of the day in the grounds around the house.
Silverton has something like 19 murals around the town, and we enjoyed finding most of them on a walking tour. (We enjoyed it, that is, except when Judy had us turn in the wrong direction...)
Harris had to take a picture of this one...the Silverton Red Sox team, made up of local men who worked at the Silver Falls Timber Company. They were also a farm team for the Boston Red Sox.....and played their last game in 1954.
This was a clever hide....a cache disguised as a sprinkler.
These murals were copies of Norman Rockwell's famous paintings of the Four Freedoms.
Harris talked to this woman who was touching up a mural of Bobbie the Wonder Dog. (Lost on a vacation to Indiana, showed back up in Silverton 6 months later). She works every summer keeping the murals in good shape.
A mural dedicated to a local boy who made it big...Don Pettit, who as an astronaut spent 6 months as a mission specialist aboard the International Space Station.
We had to drive a few miles out of town to see the Gallon House covered bridge.
The name Gallon House was due to the bridge's use as a "pigeon drop" for liquor at the north entrance. Operators at a liquor dispensary nearby sold "white lightening" whiskey by the gallon to Silverton residents. At the time, Silverton was "dry," not allowing liquor to be sold in town, while Mt. Angel (a nearby town) was "wet."
We also found another cache nearby.
Fields of pumpkins turning orange for fall.
We went back to the RV park for a quick lunch, and then took our bikes for a short ride to find more caches...one in a nearby cemetery (from the 1800's), and one under a light post in a parking lot. While we were at the last one, we ran into a woman and her kids trying to find the same cache. They didn't know the trick about lifting up the metal "apron" where the cache is hidden. They were happy to find it, and Harris took a picture because they were just so darn cute.
We biked back to our camp, sat outside in the warm sunshine, and then had a great dinner. Harris grilled steak, cooked a potato and made a salad. Not the usual camp food!
total miles driven today= 12miles
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