Oregon Wildfires

Active wildfires in Oregon as of August 16, 2026 - AirNow

From a story in Willamette Week:

State Rep. Mark Owens (R-Crane) can see the fires from his front porch.

This summer, the Big Grass, Coleman Creek, and Second Flat fires tore across southeast Oregon, all three of them megafires (covering greater than 100,000 acres), in the biggest wildfire summer in recorded state history. On the worst days, the air quality index near Owens’ alfalfa fields in Harney County hits 540. He checks the weather every morning like any farmer. Lately, that means checking smoke.

Owens has represented House District 60 in southeastern Oregon since 2020. His district contains more acres than the state of Indiana: Malheur, Harney, Lake, Baker, and Grant counties, plus part of Deschutes. It is easily the most fire-exposed legislative district in Oregon, if not the nation. It’s also alfalfa and cattle country.

Oregon House District 60

Report from Bingen

Silent RR Crossing

Iowa Man came to town today so we had lunch at Longbottoms. We were talking about the advantages of living in Bingen (which is across the Columbia River from Hood River) versus living in the big city. Rent, as you might expect, is cheaper. Grocery stores are few, scattered and cost a bit more. 

The thing that caught my attention is the trains - 50 trains a day. There are three crossings where the train has to blow its horn, and if you are nearby those horns are loud. I've been out to Bingen a couple of times, but I don't remember the trains being a big deal. But then I was only there for a few hours. Iowa Man survives by stuffing silicon earplugs in his ears.

Anyway, Bingen is supposed to be getting a Quiet Zone. Iowa Man was telling me a silent crossing involves concrete barriers to keep cars from evading the crossing gates and probably some other requirements. Looking around for a picture, this is the only one I could find. It is the splash panel that shows up when YoiTube displays a list of videos. Play the associated video and this image is nowhere to be found. This is a screenshot that I uploaded to Google Photos to crop because my Windows image viewer won't crop images anymore. All I get is a black image. Probably need more memory. I wonder if older memory would be cheaper that the latest stuff that is costing 10x more than it was a year ago.

Hood River Bridge

The 100 year old bridge over the Columiba River is going to be replaced, or at least they are talking about replacing it. That's kind of the way it goes with people. Before anyone does anything, everyone has to discuss it and discuss it at length.

Hood River Bridge

Looking at that first picture of the bridge reminds me of just how wide the Columbia River is at that point. The bridge is almost a mile long, and remember, this isn't one of your long, lazy flatland rivers, at this point the Columbia is rolling along at two miles per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It don't stop for nobody or nuttin'.

Insitu FLARES and INTEGRATOR drones

Insitu is building drones in Bingen. It was bought out by Boeing and now it is being absorbed by ACHR, one of the air-taxi guys. Since our skies will soon be filled with flying air-taxis, does this mean that Bingen will become the Detroit of the 21st Century?

Cunningham-Hall PT-6 biplane with Mount Hood

There is a big antique car and airplane museum in Hood River - WAAAM - the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum. The museum was founded in 2007 which might explain why I have never heard of it. I don't know how many vehicles they have on display but the list on Wikipedia takes 17 screens. The museum itself covers five acres. Iowa Man recommends riding in the cart.

Custom map of the Hood River area made for this post.

Small Airplane Crash

Example Bush Plane

Today at lunch Marc tells a story. About a month ago, a friend of his was flying a bush plane and attempted to land on an island in the Columbia River. Came in for a smooth landing on strip of sand and one of the landing gear legs broke off. The airplane turned and went into the water. The pilot got out okay, but the airplane is under water and the river current is trying to drag it away. It's not very deep there so he is able to grab hold of the tail and keep it from going anywhere. Not a tenable situation.

Fortunately, the crew of a passing tugboat saw him crash and came over to help. The tug positioned itself to block the flow of the river and gave the pilot a rope with which he was able to secure the aircraft. The tug has business elsewhere, so it leaves, but he calls a buddy tug who doesn't have any pressing business and he comes over to help out.

That evening Marc and a couple other guys took a duck boat out to the island. On the way there they were passed by a Columbia County police boat. They expected nothing but grief from the police, but surprisingly the police turned out to very helpful. Probably helped that our crew were not drunk and not behaving like assholes.

They pulled the plane out of the water and set about drying out the engine and getting ready to take off the wings. They came back the next two days with a work platform borrowed from a local marina and ferried the various parts of the airplane back to dry land.

What caused the problem? Did a wheel fall in a hole or hit a big rock? Near as we can tell, no. Apparently the landing gear leg just snapped off. A stress fracture, maybe? Very weird. 

Aerometal

Lockheed C-121 Constellation

Found out Matt is working for Aerometal in Aurora, Oregon. A very niche business 'specializing in Continuing Airworthiness in Aging Aircraft.'

Train to Toledo

We were talking about the train wreck in Toledo, Oregon, at lunch today and Jack related this little tale.

One fine spring day, about a zillion years ago, when he was a student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, he and about a hundred other kids hopped the train to Toledo. It rolled through town going only a couple of miles per hour, so it was easy to grab hold and climb aboard.

The train consisted of open top hopper cars filled with wood chips. Jack had brought a quart of beer. Sitting on top of the world, riding on a cloud of wood chips through the forest primeval, he drank it. Now nature calls, so he climbs down the ladder at the end of the car and hanging on with one arm, relieves himself. Unfortunately, at just this moment the train went by somebody's home where there was a big family picnic going on. Oops.

Eventually the train got to Toledo and the kids got off and roamed around town for a while. Later on it's time to catch the train back to Corvallis. Now it's dark and the hoppers are empty so they are sitting on cold steel, freezing their asses off. Far as we know, nobody died.

Toledo Locomotive Derailment

Back on the Rail [Toledo Derailment Update]
7idea Productions

This happened this week not too very far from here- 80 miles as the crow flies. Here's a couple more videos about this incident:

• Derailed on a Trestle! 12 minutes. Mostly background information.
• Trestle Derailment Update 2 minutes
• Timelapse: Crews work to free 3 locomotives stranded on Oregon trestle 4 minutes Building the temporary bridge

Railroad Line from Toledo, Oregon, to Corvallis
This line runs over the coast range. Toledo is at the left end of the yellow-green line, just east of Newport. The word Corvallis is partially covered by that same line. You can read the last part of the name: -allis. I-5 is near the right hand side of the image.

I don't think I've ever encountered slugs before, at least not the railroad kind. Seems they have been around for awhile. Trains tells us that they got their start in the early 20th century at a copper mine in Montana.

Google Map

Addiction

District Attorney Nathan Vasquez. (Nathaniel Perales)

Oregon has been trying to figure out what to do about recreational / dangerous / addictive / narcotic drugs for a while. We haven't found a solution, but we keep trying different things. Some people say we should just lock up all the drug addicts, but keeping people in prison costs a lot of money, and the prisons are overcrowded anyway, and nobody wants to spend more money on prisons. Anyway, Nathan is going to try tightening up the existing laws. We shall see if that makes any difference. Willamette Week has the story, wherein I found this quote:

Finallynelson50, via Reddit: “Clearly, none of you have ever had an addiction to drugs problem. This new shit on the streets is bad. Starts out delivering an immense high and you love it. Feels like everything in your life has just disappeared. Abused sexually, physically, emotionally, childhood issues, you name it, it’s all gone for the time being. Then you notice that you need more to achieve the same high. You want to quit, but you can’t! No one except an addict knows what it feels like to get ‘SICK,’ you’d literally sell your soul to not get sick! It literally makes everything in your body excruciatingly painful like you can’t imagine. Most users you see out there are looking for the drugs so they don’t get sick. None of you know what you’re talking about. The only thing that this is going to do is keep the jails full! And that, of course, makes the government money.”

I don't see how keeping the jails full makes anyone any money, unless it's a private prison, and I don't think we have any of those here in Oregon.

 

Deep Blue Oregon

Portland Frog Brigade - Eric Shelby

Line from a letter to Willamette Week might explain why Oregon consistently elects Democrats:

One party rule: That’s because the R’s keep nominating folks out of step with Oregon. Some 20 years ago a former Republican elected official said: The Oregon Republican Party has been hijacked by an extreme right-wing Libertarian faction. So that no longer can it elect anyone in a statewide election. (I think since then, 2 R’s have been elected to a minor post.)

This leads me to think that Oregon Republicans are dunderheads more concerned with ideological purity than actually trying to improve our situation. Also, frogs like water and water, at least in cartoons, is blue.

Solar Farm

Dennis is getting a solar array installed. If you add up the numbers, I suppose they make sense. I'm not interested in having another contraption around. Contraptions break and then they need to be repaired.

Tillamook Rock Lighthouse

The Brutality of Tillamook Rock Lighthouse - Terrible Tilly
Big Old Boats

The pacing on this video is a little slow, but given the hardships the builders went through to construct this thing, I'm willing to cut him a little slack.

Tillamook Lighthouse

The lighthouse is just off the coast of northwest Oregon. Highway 26 (near the bottom of the map) runs by my house on its way to Portland. The Columbia River is at the top of the map. It runs by Astoria on its way to Portland. Area shown is about 30 miles square.

Wikipedia has a page.

Tu Tu' Tun Lodge

South Oregon Coast Bridges

We spent a lovely weekend at the Tu Tu' Tun Lodge in southern Oregon. The lodge is on the Rogue River just east of Gold Beach.

Elk bedded down at the Dean Creek Elk Viewing Area

On our way down we noticed a couple of elk standing in a field. Then we noticed a bunch of lumps sticking up out of the grass. They were the heads of elk that were bedded down in the grass. There must have been a couple of dozen of them. Very cool.

Part of our journey took us on US Highway 101 along the Oregon coast. Much of the road was nice, straight two lane blacktop in good condition. There were patches though that had suffered from subsidence. They had been repaired, but pavement now had slumps and small hills. Since there are like 8,000 miles of two lane blacktop in Oregon so I suspect the road crews are kept busy. Our tax dollars at work.

Somewhere along the way we went through a tunnel. I spent a couple of hours examining the map without finding one. Through happenstance I stumbled over the the Elkton creek tunnel, which is not on the coast, but we did go through there on the way down. Since it seems to be only tunnel on our route, it must be the one, which is weird since I could have sworn it was on the coast.

While I was looking for the tunnel, I recorded every bridge I noticed. Most of them are small, simple bridges over creeks, but there are four big, impressive ones, all designed by Conde McCullough.

Siuslaw River Bridge
Florence, Oregon

Umpqua River Bridge
Reedsport, Oregon

Conde McCullough Memorial Bridge
Coos Bay, Oregon

Isaac Lee Patterson Bridge
Gold Beach, Oregon

All four of these bridges were built in the 1930s.

Tweakers

Fentanyl pills on the streets on Portland, where such doses of the great annihilator cost as little as $1 apiece. (Credit: Tara Faul)

IAman is looking to move to Bingen, Washington. Bingen is about 60 miles east of Portland across the Columbia River from Hood River, Oregon.

The main reason for the move is our neighborhood is the drug / murder epicenter.  3 middle aged good Samaritans murdered in last few months. 

This article captures the bad stuff that I see. 

Oregon’s Drug Apocalypse - Matt Thompson

The linked story is pretty horrofic.

Previous posts about IAman's current residence:

• Witness to the end of Civilization
• The Borg Have Landed

Costco Carry

Costco Carry

Went to Costco two days ago and this guy was into front of us at the checkout line. I know you can get a permit for concealed-carry, but I'm not sure what the rules are for open carry. In any case, I don't know if anyone besides me noticed, and nobody made a fuss.

Entomology

A sculpture by artist Pete Beeman depicts a Megarhyssa "stump stabber" wasp atop a microscope, symbolizing the entomology labs at the North Valley Complex facility. Photo by Samantha Swindler.

The North Valley Complex is in Wilsonville, Oregon, about 15 miles south of Portland.

out.aza.blue

out.aza.blue

out.aza.blue is a gourmet restaurant out in the middle of nowhere, 20 minutes from my house on the Wilson River highway. You gotta keep your eyes open for it because it's just a wide spot in the road. 

They serve dinner and brunch, but only when they are so inclined. We made reservations for a prime rib dinner on Saturday night to celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary. Very pleasant. We sat on the deck out back overlooking Gales Creek. We saw some mosquitoes, or at least we thought they were mosquitoes, but we didn't get bit and I didn't hear any of that annoying high pitched buzzing you often get with mosquitoes, so maybe they were some other kind of bug. 

The food was wonderful, the mushroom tart especially. Prime rib is good because it is meat, but I think I'd just as soon have a steak. You really need a sharp knife and a cutting board to dissect a slice of prime rib, especially when it is almost raw. My wife got a beer and I got a bourbon and water. The bourbon came in a tulip shaped glass and I think it was a double. The water came in a shot glass, and was only one shot. Dessert was tiramiso. Evidently they had more than they needed so Gabriel, the chef, came out and passed out second servings.

Port of Lewiston Idaho

Why There’s a Pacific Ocean Port in Idaho
Half as Interesting

Marine traffic, trains and pipelines are relatively invisible and mostly ignored, yet our civilization is totally dependent on them. Lewiston is like in the center of the proposed expanded state of Idaho.

So we have a serious method for getting the grain down the river to the ocean from Lewiston, but how do we get all that grain to Lewiston? So I started thinking about combines and how many you would need and I figured we need some videos. There are bunch of modern ones. Many of them are very long. Here's a short modern one and a couple about the old days. I thought the 20 mule team was a big operation. That's nothing compared to these guys.

Wheat Harvest on the Palouse
BJ Swanson

24 million bushels are exported out of Lewiston each year. An acre of ground can produce about 50 bushels of wheat, so you would need 480 thousand acres, which translates into 750 square miles of land. If you are driving a combine with a cutter head width of 15 feet and you are traveling at 4 miles per hour, if will take 66,000 hours to harvest all that wheat. Figure you got a month to get it all cut, and you're working 24 hour days, you're going to need 100 combines to get it all cut. And you probably are not going to have a month, you might have two weeks, and 24 hours a day is wishful thinking, so more likely you are going to need 500 combines. Make allowances for problems as the necessity to get the wheat harvested come hell of high water, you are probably going to want double that number.

To Till a Field: Man and Machine in the Palouse
Washington State University Libraries' Films

Harvesting Wheat with a 33-Mule Team
Fort Walla Walla Museum

Palouse Prairie in the Pacific Northwest

The Palouse:

The Palouse is a distinct geographic region of the northwestern United States, encompassing parts of north central Idaho, southeastern Washington, and, by some definitions, parts of northeast Oregon. It is a major agricultural area, primarily producing wheat and legumes. Situated about 160 miles (260 km) north of the Oregon Trail, the region experienced rapid growth in the late 19th century.

The Palouse is home to two land-grant universities: the University of Idaho in Moscow and Washington State University in Pullman. Just eight miles (13 km) apart, both schools opened in the early 1890s.

 

Greater Idaho

Greater Idaho

Crook county is the 13th Oregon county to vote to secede from Oregon and become part of Idaho. Well, they voted to talk to Idaho about it. I've been hearing some noise about this for awhile, but I wrote it off as just noise. But now it's beginning to look like a fair number of people are getting serious about it and I don't blame them. Portland politics is full of morons, and Washington County / Silicon Forest is living in a plastic fantastic bubble brought about by the financial success of Nike, Tektronix, Intel and Nvidia.

Umatilla county (the big gray blob on the northern border surrounded by red) is home to the military base where we had a zillion bombs filled with nerve gas. They eventually dismantled / crushed / destroyed all those bombs and the nerve gas they contained. I believe Ronald Reagan ordered those bombs to be filled with nerve gas.

ZeroHedge:

If the group's [Greater Idaho] goal comes to full fruition, Oregon would end up 62% smaller by size, but only 9% smaller by population. That math that underscores the contrast between the sparsely populated, rural eastern region and the more densely-populated coastal areas. It also highlights the eastern counties' lack of political strength in influencing statewide decisions.

 

Sunshine

From Pill Hill:

Mt. St. Helens (left) and Mt. Adams (center)
Marquam Bridge front center

Mt. Hood
Ross Island Bridge (left) and South Waterfront

The Lion King

The Lion King Broadway musical trailer
syracuse.com

Took the family to see the show at Keller Auditorium this afternoon. Singing and dancing and outrageous costumes. The singing and dancing didn't do much for me, I didn't recognize any of the songs and the lyrics were pretty much unintelligible, to me anyway. The show opened with the Rafiki (the baboon) rambling on in some sort of gibberish, might have been a foreign language, might have been gibberish. Anyway it didn't make any sense, but at least I could hear her clearly. To top it off, when she is done with her spiel she asks the audience if we understood, which got her a big laugh. There were several other funny bits which I appreciated. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I got the funny. The costumes were pretty great and the way they were manipulated was very cool. Turns out the costumes were made in Scappoose, Oregon, which is just a village not too far from here on Route 30 along the Columbia River.

The Lion King on Broadway is coming to Portland; all the puppets were made in Oregon
Here is Oregon

Went to Bullards afterwards for dinner. Great food, great service and a great bill to go along with it.

Wells Fargo, a long story about not much.

Wells Fargo Forest Grove

IAman reports:

There is a nice branch of Wells Fargo bank 2 miles from me. Looks like it was built in 1990s, maybe 3,000 sq feet. 3 tellers, about 10 empty cubicles. A drive through and a good functioning ATM. So far, sort of good.

A couple weeks ago I went in to secure a safety deposit box for some treasures and documents, box 31.  ‘Mel’(Melissa) slight disheveled frizzy haired 20 something waited on me. The process took quite a while, 30 minutes.  I asked about having my kids have access to the box, Mel didn’t know but would forward a request for info to the main office. I forget about this promise.

The next day, I get a call from the branch manager, I asked about my request through Mel about my kids access to the box. She replied Mel left WF the day after, but she would contact the main office to find out about box access for kids. She then quizzed me about the level of service Mel provided, I said all was  fine. Strange.

A week later I go to deposit health directives into the box. I ask for the manager who is on lunch break, relay my inquiry about kids access, then go to deposit papers. My antennae now being up, I verify the contents of the box as I place papers within.

I leave as the manager is still lunching. “She will get right back with you”.  Still crickets.

But what really grinds-my-goat is the entire bank staff was wearing beyond-casual clothes, hoodies and sweats and hair in bungees. I was raised in a era of bankers in pinstripes.

Googling all this, the advise is don’t use bank safety deposit boxes, they are a relic of a bygone era. Not only boxes but me too. Who knew?