A Little Off The Beaten Path: Greetings From Hood River!

Normally, I don't get to do this sort of update as it isn't a good idea in general to announce to the world one is away from home and it is an especially bad idea if an obsessed ex wife follows your blog (now almost 3 years after Andy and I got married), but we have a house sitter, so all is well.

We decided to just take a quick trip out of town for fun and to get away from the crazy heat, so we're in Oregon for a few days.

We stopped at one of our favorite spots for lunch--the Geiser Grand Hotel in Baker--on the way over yesterday. If we are going to spend the money & have the extra calories of eating out, we want some fabulous food and were NOT disappointed. We both ordered pasta dishes for lunch and

WE'RE ON VACATION!!!!!! When we spent a few days in McCall in March, we realized it was impossible to truly abide by the rules while traveling, so it's sort of a small vacation from the Year of No Processed Foods. I am proud to say that this has been our only "cheat" so far (we think) and that we were both so thirsty after the Diet Pepsi that we switched back to water & coffee for the rest of the day. We are trying to be reasonably good--especially since food cheats tend to lead to serious stomach upset. Still, that diet Pepsi was marvelous.

Since neither of us had ever really been there, we stopped in LaGrande, Oregon for coffee, where I was delighted to find this

for $10 in an antique shop. Granted, that's about $8 more than it's worth, but I was delighted to find that the original owner had used it and even added her own recipes into the blank pages and there are all sorts of cuttings of recipes from other sources hidden between the pages. Published in 1930, it outlines how to host dinners and luncheons with or without your servant (and boy, I know I've been struggling with THAT one) and might have been published shortly after Crisco hit the market--or the author's husband worked for Crisco--because almost every recipe calls for Crisco, and she even suggests using it in place of butter. I thought the ultimate was a "Crisco sandwich spread" which involves Crisco, egg yolk, vinegar, lemon juice, and Worchestershire sauce and which she swore would keep several weeks in a cool place. And here I am constantly checking the expiration dates on eggs in the shell in the fridge. They were a brave people then.

We also found this

a sewing machine & hot tub dealer called "Sew & Soak." Makes sense to me--little stresses me out as much as sewing.

Then, because we'd never been there either, we stopped at the Wild Horse "tribal" casino outside of Pendleton:

We each lost a dollar on the penny slots--which are now fully computerized and don't even have a handle to pull--and left. For those not in the US, the Native Americans (mistakenly called Indians by Columbus, which took 500 years to correct) were either exterminated by whites or rounded up and stuck on the driest, least desirable land available in the 1800s and were told to stay on these "reservations." I don't think our history books used in schools actually have been changed to mention that the US did one of the most thorough "ethnic cleansing" jobs of all time, but the tribes still own these crappy pieces of land, and it has been determined that they own the land sort of as sovereign peoples. (This is my understanding only so don't quote me or start sending me nasty-grams over this one) So several years ago, the tribal leaders or whomever is in charge came up with the idea that if they are under their own rules, then the usual rules prohibiting gambling do not apply, so up popped casinos everywhere. And this was one of them. We're not much for gambling, and I thought this one was particularly depressing, but there were lots of people there, so it must be popular.

By this point it was hot & windy, so were through playing tourist and just cowered in the air-conditioned car and headed for Hood River, our first stop.

We stayed at the Hood River Hotel, which would be quite charming if the staff had been a bit more friendly or a bit more prone to not answer personal calls while we were checking in, and if the hotel policy included not gouging customers on parking vouchers--no validation here--while not having any actual parking available.

The hotel is an old one with wooden floors and long halls lined with doors with the transoms--which are all painted shut now. The elevator is ancient

You literally get in and slide the grate shut, which I've seen in old movies but which I have never actually used, but we were reassured to see that the elevator inspectors know about and have seen this one:

and it works like a charm. Of course, being an old hotel there are actually several stairways, which we have used for everything except bringing in the luggage.

Our room is tiny & was definitely not the one we saw on the website, but it's cute. We have his

and her

closets,

a bathroom

which earns an award for being the only bathroom I've been able to photograph in it's entirety with just one picture.

And if we get really annoyed at the parking problem