Leaf

A couple of days ago a friend and I stopped to check out the new Nissan Leaf, the all electric car.  The first thing you notice are don't notice is that it looks just like any other car. 

Remember the Honda Insight? 









Well this car, while not beautiful, does not look odd.  It bears a very strong resemblance to the Nissan Versa.  In fact, it share the same, what the car manufacturers call, platform; the layout, brakes, etc.

So the salesman told us about the unusual way to order it.  It is done almost entirely on the computer.  You first pay a $500 deposit to get the ball rolling, then you hire a Nissan approved electrician to wire a charging station at your house.  Then Nissan starts to build your car.  The sales person told us that the price had recently risen from $34k to $37k because of demand.  (Leave it to car makers to make a buck; or three thousand bucks ) when they can.  Order time is about 9 months.
  
Details:  100 miles between charges, if you don't use A/C or heater.  Less if you do.  There is a reading on the dashboard that tells you how many miles are left on your battery.  A Leaf was recently driven from Gresham, Or up to Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood and back on one charge.  The battery was nearly used up going up the mountain, but the braking coming back down recharged it enough to get the car back to Gresham with "2 miles" left on the meter.  It would be the right car for a town car.  The batteries are going to get batter as time goes on.


  An Observation>>>>>>   Car dealers do not recognize the recession.  They continue to try to wring as much moned as they possibly can out of the individual.  The sales guy told us that a certain 2009 Civic on the lot had gone up (according to the book) $2500 in a month so they raised their asking price that much.  He said, My boss says there's an "A__ For Every Seat" so we will evidentially sell it.  HMMMM.............  No wonder I hate car dealers.

Bonneville Dam

Well we finally made it to Bonneville Dam.  It is located about 40 miles east of Portland on I-84.  We walked around the grounds of the fish hatchery, fed the large rainbow trout in one of the holding ponds, found Herman the Sturgeon in another pond.  The area is nicely landscaped and also has a large gift shop to accomodate the 500,000 annual visitors to the dam.  The dam itself is a mile from the first area and drive is intersting because the roadway travels through a guarded gate, across a narrow bridge just below the locks and then along the dam itself.  The visitor center at the dam has four levels.  The greeting area and gift shop is actually the third floor.  It is staffed by several volunteers who live in their RVs nearby on one of the islands created for the facilities.  The top level is for an overall view of the area.  The second level has two theaters, and the bottom level has the viewing windows for the fish ladders.  The fish ladders are provided to give the salmon a way to swim upstream around the dam.  How well they work is a question, but they are better than having no ladder at all.  The viewing level also contained the room that contained the person who counted every fish that swam up the ladder.  Imagine having that job!  Not the most exciting job in the world!
     2pm brought a tour complete with a ranger wearing the tradition green and gray uniform and smoky bear hat.  She, however, and the other rangers here, are employed by the Army Corp of Engineers so they have the "castle" emblem on their sleeves instead of the NPS emblem.  The talk was mostly about how the system of dams works, but we did get to walk over to the historic power house where there are eight huge turbines generating the electricity that is powering this computer as I write this.

  After finishing the tour we stopped to visit with one of the volunteers to find out information on volunteering at Bonneville.  On our way back we detoured to the picnic ground which is adjacent to the volunteer campground.  The area aeems very nice but I'm sure that it is always windy because we noticed that several folks had put up some sort of wind breaks around their picnic tables to slow it down.  Kinda like being at the coast.  The volunteer we talked to did tell us that there is also a vistor center on the Washington side as well and the power house tour there actually takes you right on top of the turbines and you can feel their vibrations.  Another time perhaps.

Camas / Wasougal

"Let's drive east on Hwy 14 and check out Bonneville Dam.   We've never gone on the tour before."

So we ended up in Wasougal before we knew it.  We saw a sign for a museum and found it right across the street from the Pendleton Woolen Mill Store.  The sign stated, "No Tours today", but we went inside to see what was there.  The store was full of anything and everything Pendleton from shirts to coats to handbags none of which seemed to be any kind of bargain.
  Then it was across the street to see what was inside the small-town museum.  The couple that were working, Joe and Dorthy, moved to Wasougal in 1947 so they were very familiar with the stories of the area.  We spent over an hour talking to these nice people. 
   It was after 1:30 and past "time to eat" and we ended up in downtown Callas, a very cute tree-lined downtown area.  Lunch at Natasia's  ( Russian Goulash for R, Chicken and Mushroom Lasanga for me).
Good choice followed by two antique stores made a great day. 

Yesterday Sunday 8/7/11

Busy day at FOVA.  A wedding on a grassy area with nearby evergreens.  The area was set up when I got to work at 9am.  The ceremony was at 2pm and the area was back to its original state by 5pm.  The transformations in this park are amazing.
  Sunday, a Concourse de Elegance ( which means a fancy car show) was staged on the grass of Officers Row.  Officers Row is a row of about fifteen homes that were built in the 1880s by the Army for their officers.  They have been restored and belong to the city of Vancouver.   Most of them are rented out to businesses, but one (the Grant  House) is a restaurant and the other (the Marshall House) is open for tours week-days and used for parties and weddings on weekends.
  As I walked the girls early sunday morning, cars were arriving and concessions were being set up.  All day long folks came and went to view the beautiful automobles and by 6pm the visitors were gone, the cars were gone, the concessionaires were gone, and just a few folks remained to complete the final clean up.  This morning, the only trace of the event was some pressed down grass in certain areas.  Another successful event came and went.

Being Near the Airport

We are about 1/2 hour from the Portland Airport.  It is convenient if you fly often, but it does have it's drawbacks.  Large commercial jets take off and climb into the skies over the Columbia River which is just south of us.  This is especially frequent in the early morning.  The flights seem to leave PDX every 10 minutes from six to eight am and then several an hour all day long.  If I lived here I would get used to it, but after a month here, I still stop to look.  I am usually walking the dogs and have been checking the departure of a plane with Southwest markings.  Six days a week it passes by at 6:45am give of take 5 minutes.