Sauvie Island 600mm Lens Test

My wonderful wife helped me pick up a new lens for me for my 36th birthday this past week.  For all those photographers out there, it’s a 150-600mm lens.  This full-frame lens on my ASP-C size sensor means an amazing 800mm zoom with my Nikon D7000 DSLR.  To test it out we headed to find some birds on Sauvie Island.  

Despite a brief patch of hard rain we were able to find many test subjects and I had a great time testing it out.  Not much to write about here so I’ll add just a couple good photos.  For the rest check out my Facebook album.  Thanks love, can’t wait to use this during our upcoming Africa Safari!

Two Year Anniversary

Today was our 2 year wedding anniversary.  As usual we wanted to head out to Hood River to pick some berries and get some dinner but this year we invited Eric along.  We chose not to tell him it was our special day because we knew he wouldn’t go!  On the way we stopped to explore Oneonta Gorge as well.  Read on…

Hamilton Mountain

Today Tom, Banjo, and Eric joined us for a hike up Hamilton Mountain.  Tom had been on the hike before but not Eric so we thought it was a great place close by to check out and get some sunshine and exercise the dogs.  Read on…

4th of July on Coast

After an exhausting and hot hike up Elks and Kings Mountains in the Tillamook Forest of the Coast Range Emily and I were absolutely starving so we were super excited to get to Tillamook and find the Old Oregon Smokehouse along 101 just north of the city.  We had a great dinner of clam chowder and an oyster po’boy sandwich.  The owners even closed up and left for drinks while we were still there!  From there it was an hour drive down the coast to our secret beach location where we would camp for the next two wonderful nights.  Read on…

Kings Mountains

With Fourth of July weekend upon us and temperatures predicted to reach 100 degrees in Portland once again, we decided it was time to head to the coast with Leo to stay cool and enjoy the ocean breezes.  We also wanted to get some exercise in so we planned a 10 mile loop hike over Elk Mountain and Kings Mountain in the Tillamook Forest of the Coast Range.  It turned out nearly to be too much for poor Leo.  Read on…

Kelly Point

After the complete failure of driving to Three Pools along Opal Creek on Saturday to only find it overrun with drunk idiots with glass bottles everywhere we decided to stay local and find some water for Leo to cool off in.  We first tried a couple beaches along the Columbia but dogs were forbidden so we instead made our way out to Kelly Point, which is the convergence of the Willamette River into the Columbia just north of the St. Johns neighborhood of Portland.  

We spent the next hour or so walking around the point of land with Leo and “encouraging” him into the water to cool off.  He’s not a big fan of swimming so much of it was me carrying him out to the water and having him swim back to Emily at the beach.  We saw a couple wakeboard boats on the river and one was anchored right off the beach… certainly gave Emily and I a few ideas!  So… after a weekend of failure after failure, we were able to finally get Leo cooled off in a river!

Three Pools

Emily and I today drove 2 hours from Portland to check out these Pools along Opal Creek.. what a mistake.  Took these photos in 5 minutes, then walked away and drove all the way home.  = FAIL.

Sunday Parkways

This Sunday was the North Portland Sunday Parkways so Emily, my mom, and I joined Tom, Andrea, Everett, Eric, Arley, Katie, and a few others for the afternoon bike ride stopping at various North Portland Parks throughout the early afternoon.  It was Everett’s first time out on a bike ride so it was a big day for the Spaul family.  

Highlights included a dog wearing doggles on a double decker bike, the same little girl as last year on her unicycle and a stop at a winery out of a guys garage!

Night Flights

Tonight my mom had talked us into joining her at the Alberta Rose Theatre for an aerial acrobatics show entitled Sea of Dreams.   Chris Holm was coming up to visit so he joined us as well.  At first the story line was absolutely crazy and the dorky overacting almost had me ready to leave my seat for the whiskey bar down the road, but then… the acrobatics started with some great EDM music and I decided to stick around.  

Overall it was a pretty cool performance, but I wish they had completely just left out the dialogue between changing out the rope systems and just played good music to fill the time instead.

Ashley’s Wedding

Ashley,  one of Emily’s best friends from high school was having her wedding on Martha’s Vineyard at a Yacht Club.  To be completely honest Emily and I were expecting this to be a “big money wedding” because lobster was on menu, but to our surprise it was incredibly planned, amazingly beautiful, and probably even cost less than our wedding!  And it couldn’t have been at a better location!   Read on..

Time with our Nieces

Between weddings Emily and I got to finally really spend some quality time with our new nieces.  We got to go with Sophie to her morning book reading, as well as a morning music class where all the children played with toys and sang various songs.  Sophie is still very much attached to Jen at all times but slowly she opened up to both Emily and I when we got to play with her at their house.  Read on…

Sarah and Danny’s Wedding

Emily and I flew home for a week and a day for two East Coast weddings.  The first was Danny and Sarah in Connecticut and the second was Ashley and Matt on Martha’s Vineyard.  In between we had a very relaxing week with Emily’s family, our nieces, and even a long overdue visit with Kenny in Boston.  Read on…

BD & Carrie's Wedding

This weekend Emily and I drove out to BD and Carrie’s wedding reception at Silver Falls.  They had a very small ceremony of just family and super close friends but opened up the campground to all their friends for a night of drinking, music, dancing, and camping overnight.  Emily and I always enjoy it when we have the occasion to spend time with all our Corvallis friends in one place.  The only Portland people that were at the reception were Ryan and Tim who have been long time friends with Brian.  

We spent the afternoon drinking great beer, playing washers that Colin had made for the new married couple and a very cool “big-sized” game involving pulling sticks out of a basket while trying not to let the balls above them fall down - no idea the name of it.  BD and Carrie had hired “Wild Hogs in the Woods” to play and they were amazing.  No surprise that Jen had a little too much to drink and passed out behind some bushes, and no surprise that after the band ended the party continued around a camp fire down by the stream late into the night.  Everyone seemed to have a great time and the food was amazing.  On Sunday Em and I left a little early to go spend the afternoon with Chris and Paris as it would be the last time we might see them in Corvallis with them moving to Moscow, ID.

Grand Ronde River Trip

This Memorial Day Emily, Leo and I went on a great Grand Ronde River rafting trip with Jason and his dog Arby, Adam, Slaughter, Josh, Alina and their dog Baya.  This was a 45 mile river trip from Minam, OR to Troy, OR that we would take 4 leisurely days to raft.  We had three boats, Josh & Alina with Baya and Jason and Arby on an oar boat and Emily, Brian and I on a rental boat from PSU.  Despite a little rain at the start we had a great trip.  Read on…

Saddle Mountain

It had come time for Emily and I to take a break for ourselves and do a hike that my mom couldn’t manage with us.  Emily came home early in the morning from Carrie’s bachelorette party at the Edgefield McMenamins and we packed up Leo and headed out to the Coast Range to climb Saddle Mountain again.  The first time we did it was a few years ago in the clouds with Jason, Jenn, Scott and Daniel so we were excited to see the views on a nice crisp, clear day.  Read on…

Wahclella Falls

Today Emily and I took my mom and Leo out to the Gorge for a hike up Wahclella Falls.  The whole hike is just over 2 miles round trip with less than 400 feet of gain so we thought it would be a good first step for my mom.  read on…

Advanced Inpho Training and Visiting Family

This week I headed to the Trimble office in Westminster, CO for an Advanced Inpho Training course.  At QSI I was recently promoted to lead up the Advanced Imaging Team in the Portland office and I felt it would serve the team well if I were to get some more advanced training in the software that we use to process the imagery.  There’s not much to say about the training except that I ate well, actually was able to feel snow fall on me this winter, and got to spend the weekend after hanging out with my totally awesome aunt and uncle Roger and Catherine and my cousins Cherie, Adam and Asia.  Always a fun time catching up with them!  Oh… and I got to see some bunny rabbits around the pretty cool hotel I stayed at - Drury Inn, which provided two drinks tickets for me each night of my stay.

Sauvie Island

Today Emily and I drove out to Sauvie Island to check it out.  This is an island created by the split of the Willamette River into the Multnomah Channel and it’s entrance into the Columbia River.  It’s small at about 26,000 acres and has only about 1200 residents but it is less than 10 miles from our house.  We had heard that the island contains a lot of wildlife, especially birds, so we decided to drive out in the winter when the leaves aren’t on the trees to obstruct our views.  Read on…

ASPRS Columbia Chapter Meeting

Emily and I went to the Annual Columbia Chapter of ASPRS meeting at the Bridgeport Brewery.   It was the first meeting I’ve attended and I thought it might be dry and just a bunch of industry talk but instead it was really great.  There were general announcements of office position changes but then we had an amazing presentation by a master brewer about the history of beer styles.  We got to sample some amazing beers and also get a walk-through of the entire brewery.  

Emily and I were able to meet a bunch of people in the remote sensing industry and had a great meal as well.  I definitely plan on getting more involved in the chapter going forward, especially since one of their main focuses will be the emerging drone acquisition market.  

Skinning up the Palmer with Leo

Chris Holm had come up the night before to hang out with us and catch up.  We were all excited about doing a bit of skiing on Sunday and were planning on heading to Cooper Spur to skin up and ski some of the Eliot glacier on the North side of the mountain where we figured there might be some snow.  Read on…

4T Trail without the Tram

I had encouraged Emily throughout the week to plan something for the weekend.  She came up with us trying out the 4T trail in Portland.  Working downtown I see a lot of the city but with her out at Clatskanie she doesn’t get to explore the city much so we thought it would be a fun day.  Unfortunately, because the loop requires riding a Train, Trolley, Tram, Leo couldn’t join us, although we saw a lot of dogs on the Trail portion of the 4T.  Read on…

Smith Rock and Biking in Bend

This weekend was supposed to be our Annual Maiden Hut backcountry ski weekend but with this winter being one of the worst snow seasons in Oregon’s history it wasn’t possible.  In fact we could have hiked in to the hut but where’s the fun in that?  So far this year Ski Bowl only opened for about a week and Willamette Pass and Hoodoo haven’t opened (they would never open this season - I wrote this in July :).  So yeah, I had pretty much written off any snow activity for the year.  Read on….