Just a quick post, since I’m barely getting this one in under the wire. Where did July go anyway? That’s a picture in the hills just outside Brookings, Oregon, on the most southern end of the Oregon coast. We decided to make a quick foray into the Oregon Redwoods Trail, the only forest in Oregon with any significant number of old growth redwood trees. It’s not the California Redwoods, to be sure, but it’s still worth a visit … if you don’t mind the four miles of narrow, windy gravel road into the hills at the end.
With temperatures bumping up against 100F in the Willamette Valley, Heidi, Rosie, and I escaped for a week to a fun Airbnb just north of Cape Sebastian, literally connected to the Pacific Coast Trail. The temperatures there hovered around 60F, with heavy fog that came and went, so it was a pretty stark difference. (When it’s that hot in the valley, it’s a good bet it’s going to be foggy on the coast.) Some days we were perfectly comfortable in shorts and T-shirts; others we dressed in multiple layers. In addition to just hanging out and reading, we also hiked Thunder Rock Cove down to Secret Beach (something I’ve wanted to do for a long time), saw Arch Rock, the Natural Bridge, Pistol River, Chetco Point, and even kayaked out of Brookings into some ocean coves near the bay, where we made friends with playful seals, black oystercatchers, pelagic cormorants, and plenty of other wildlife. A few other pictures are below, at the end of this post.
Right now, I’m working on the third Karen Pantelli book, as well as a few other projects. The second Pantelli book, Lethal Beauty, is now available in audio, once again narrated by the fantastic Jennifer Pickens. Speaking of audio books, I’m doing a few experiments with narrating some (and only some) of my own work. The good old WIBBOW test (an acronym I coined years ago that stands for Would I Be Better Off Writing?) has generally kept me from attempting this, since I used to manage a university digital media center and have no illusions about how much time it takes, but I finally decided I wanted to at least try it. If I enjoy it, and feel it also might help me become a better writer, then the trade off in time and effort might be worth it as long as I feel like I’m giving my readers (or in this case, listeners) a quality product. We’ll see how it goes.
Stay cool out there!
