July 14, 2009

Drift Creek Falls, Caching, Blowing Glass Again

Woke up to sunshine!  The river view was very nice.

 

Great weather means great time to take a hike.  While Sue made lunch I printed out data sheets on 18 geocaches.  Two of them were near our hiking objective.  We drove ten miles east into the hills southeast of Lincoln City.  The forest service describes the road as ‘single lane with turnouts’.  Pretty good description.  Narrow road through a rain forest.  One entry on the log for one of the  geocaches was by a guy who turned around because the road spooked him.  We thought it was beautiful.  Thick, green, lush foliage and sunshine.  When we got to the parking lot it was already half full.  We hiked/walked about a mile and a quarter through beautiful forest to Drift Creek Falls. Don’t know the name of this purple flowered plant but they were everywhere.

There in the middle of nowhere is a suspension bridge across the creek. 

The falls are right next to the bridge and you have to go to the middle of the bridge to see them. 

There is a trail on the other side of the bridge that goes down to the creek to view the bridge and falls from below. 

The cache is near the bridge and we snagged it easily.  On our walk to the falls we saw three groups of two people hiking back out and we were alone during our time there.  On our way back to the parking lot we passed over 50 people going down including two wheel chairs (the trail is wide enough but is dirt, uneven, and was very muddy in a lot of places).  Our timing was perfect.  The lot was overflowing.  Trip back down the road was just as pretty.  The entire time on the road we only passed one car just before we were back to the highway.  Pretty amazing considering the number of people we saw on the trail.

We picked up four geocaches on our way in to Lincoln City and hit the highway right at the glass blowing studio.  Headed in to pick up the bowl we made yesterday.  Disappointment.  The colors were nowhere near what we and the staff were expecting.  The technique used for our bowl needed much more infusion of color and the materials used the first time blended to a gray.  The co-owner who was not there yesterday was not pleased with the result and cheerfully offered a redo.  So she and I started over with a clearer picture of what we were after.  Very nice lady and very artistic and in control of her medium (as much as one can be in control of molten glass).  Go to her web site  http://www.kellyhowardglass.com/  and look at everything there.  This is a talented person.   Kelly (with a small bit of assistance from me) produced a very nice  bowl which happened to have a shape characteristic that turned out to be kind of tricky but she worked the glass expertly.  The final step in making a blown glass object is to score the base where the glass is attached to the blow pipe.  The object is then placed over a heat resistant nest/blanket and the blow pipe is tapped.  The object separates neatly from the pipe at the score mark. A bit of molten glass is placed over the break point and smoothed and flattened to make a base.  The object is then placed in a curing oven to cool slowly over 18 hours.  Kelly had done the scoring and was carrying the bowl and blow pipe to the blanket for separation when a bit of misfortune happened.  On her way across the shop the free end of the blow pipe tapped a steel hood over an oven.  Same result as tapping the pipe when over the nest.  You’ve all heard the result of a fine glass hitting the floor.  A twelve inch bowl hitting concrete sounds much the same way.  Pictures and video of second bowl creation at Sue’s photos. Soooo…… I got to assist in making a third bowl.  It was fun.  While we created we chatted about glass artistry and dentistry.  She has a son who has some cavities at a young age and asked for some advice on some things.  Third time looked like it worked.  We’ll know for sure tomorrow. 

 

Two blocks from the glass studio is a seafood restaurant called Mo’s.  We had to have at least one seafood meal while on the coast so we had a late lunch there.  It was tasty but not too creative.  The draw there for us was not so much the restaurant but the geocache just out the back door.  We quickly grabbed that and headed back to the carbus after what turned out to be a longer day than planned.  Along the way we found five more caches. :)