Ikea Overload

I didn't think it was possible.  I love Ikea.  Love.   I normally really enjoy any opportunity to go into one and walk around for hours looking at all the cool possibilities.   So when Cliff asked me this morning if I wanted to go to Ikea I almost couldn't get into the car fast enough.  We ate breakfast (only $2.68 total for our eggs, bacon, potatoes, french toast sticks, cinnamon bun, and coffee), walked around the top showroom, ate lunch (two Swedish meatball plates), and then walked around the bottom level.  The whole trip took around five hours.  Normally I would have been skipping out of there with my celebratory $1 ice cream but this time I was just too overwhelmed.  Never have I actually walked through the showroom actually looking for multiple pieces of furniture for an apartment.  There are so many options!  Fabrics, colors, and different sizes (oh my).  Don't get me wrong...I am totally excited to be able to plan out our apartment.  I think I just might need to get my own big breakfast next time.

Willamette to Fox Hollow

Kim and I hiked another portion of the Ridgeline Trail this Thursday. We had planned to hike to the top of Mount Pisgah, but the parking ticket machine was broken and we weren't willing to pay the over 100 dollar fine if we were ticketed for parking without a ticket. There are places in town where you can buy a parking pass, but we figured that we would just come back another day. We are going to look into possibly buying a year pass for Lane County Parks. We ended up hiking from the Willamette street trailhead to the Fox Hollow trailhead.

The top portion of the trail has you hike up through an abandoned pear orchard. Between the trees there was lots of brown grass and dead queen anne's lace.  Some of the trees were practically covered in pears the size of a tangerine. Some of the trees didn't have any fruit on them at all. You could see a bunch of places under the trees where deer had bedded down.

Once we got further on the trail you go through an open feeling forest before you get up onto the side of Spencer Butte where the forest gets much wetter. We took photos of some of the different types of ferns that you can see on the trails.

Almost all of the ferns that you see in the background behind Kim in the middle photo above are Western Sword Ferns. They can grow up to six feet tall and are found all over the Pacific Northwest. According the the Wikipedia article on them they can be used to help relieve the pain from stinging nettle (no word on how to use them to do this), and apparently the rhizomes are edible. 

I'm pretty sure these are Lady Fern, but there are a number of species of ferns that could be growing in the same environment that look very similar varying in whether they are evergreen or not, where they start branching, how thick the stems are, and water requirements. I'll let you know when I find out more.

These are Western Maiden Hair Ferns. They definitely like more water than the Sword ferns do based on where we found them. They were often on the sides of small streams where water was spraying over them. When we started to see them you could pretty much depend on the fact that we were in an area that gets deeper shade and more water. 

 And finally Licorice Fern? I really need to get a book of something. I'd say this is licorice fern with about a 50% confidence rate (not too high). It's too young for me to be able to differentiate it based on spores (as if I could at this point), but it is epiphytic, which licorice fern often is. Furthering my case is the face that Licorice Fern is said to prefer trees over rocks, more specifically big leaf maples. Is the tree pictured a big leaf maple . . . maybe. There were a lot of big leaf maples on the trail. If it wasn't some type of conifer it probably was a big leaf maple. It's exciting how much there is to learn.

I'm not sure how long our hike took. The sun came out while we were in the woods which made for some amazing views once we came out of the shadow of Spencer. It was about four miles from start to finish. We only saw five or six people the whole time. I have other photos of fungi and berries. I will post some of them later.

I don't remember why we took a photo of this tree. I think that it was larger than the surrounding trees. When we were looking through the photos later we realized that it kind of looks like there's a man in the tree on the right hand side. I say it kind of looks like MLK Jr. Kim says Jimmy Carter. I don't see Jimmy Carter at all, but could be convinced that it is someone else. What do you think?

Blanton Ridge Park

Blanton Ridge Trailhead from Google Streetview

Kim and I took a walk from the house to Blanton Ridge Park today. Blanton Ridge is part of the Eugene Ridgeline Park system which has over 1000 acres of parkland including Spencer's Butte, which Kim mentioned in our last post.

According to the pamphlet on the parks put out by the city of Eugene this portion of trails "offers a secluded walk through a mixed forest of towering Douglas-fir and big-leaf maple." You are also supposed to be able to look out over town. Unfortunately the middle of the trail was closed due to trees being down and trail maintenance so we didn't get to that part. We sadly didn't bring a camera, because if we did we might have a picture of a Steller's Jay to show you (they are the only crested Jay west of the Rocky Mountains so you should be very sad to miss out). To appease you I found a photo on Flickr.

Some rights reserved by amhuxham

The trailhead is less than a mile from the house. We decided while walking the trail that our fitness goal should be to run from our house to the top of Spencer's Butte and back. There is no timeline for the completion of this goal. That's about 10 miles round trip with over 1100 feet of vertical gain. That means that over the trip up it averages around a four percent grade. Expect photos taken by us (not the google van) of various points along this trail as time goes on. The Blanton Ridge trail is supposed to be reopened fully on October 28th.