Gardening

Our apartment complex has a garden area, and we picked a plot to start our own garden.

Getting started with our plants.

Our empty plot before we got to work.

Planting our peppers and tomatoes.

Strawberries, Rosemary and Dill

Bell peppers on the left, tomatoes on the right

We planted three different types of hops: Nugget (shown here), Brewer's Gold, and Goldings. The Brewer's Gold and Goldings were planted from rhizomes so there isn't much to see yet.
The hops won't be ready to harvest until next fall. So we have plenty of time to learn how to brew beer.

The view of the garden after all our weekend work.

Hiking at Mary's Peak

On Memorial weekend we went hiking at Mary's Peak, just west of Corvallis. The hike was a 5 mile round trip, with a 1200 ft. elevation change.

Tall trees were everywhere.

We saw a bunch of these white flowers as we got close to the peak.

A fallen tree blocked the path

A view from the top

We could see the three Sisters from the top.

Mary's Peak

Roxanne at the top.

Skinner Butte, Eugene, OR

On May 2nd, we went to Eugene to climb at Skinner Butte, a public park in the downtown area. It was a little too wet to climb so we did some rappelling.

Everybody up on the Butte setting up the ropes.

Roxanne (right) rappelling for the first time.

Slowly coming down.

Now Brandon and Roxanne are rappelling together.

Almost there.

We made it! (Roxanne is striking a similar pose.)

After rappelling we started to climb.

Roxanne almost finished a climb before it started to rain. So we went down the street to an indoor rock gym to climb for the rest of the day.