Day 3 includes yet another house in the Portland area. The house is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places, but that’s not why most people visit the house. The house is now a museum, the rooms turned into galleries.

If you enjoy natural science then you will adore this museum. If that’s not your thing, then you’ll be really bored here. It really is a museum of pretty much only rocks & minerals.

Technically, it’s called the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks & Minerals. But, who’s going to say all that? We just call it the Rice Rock Museum or even the Rock Museum.

The home turned museum was built in 1952 by rockhounds, Richard & Helen Rice.

Right out front is a large quartz piece found in Arkansas.

Main Building

The Rainbow Gallery is one of our favorites.
Top: In normal light the minerals aren’t all that wowing…
Bottom: … But, wait a few seconds and the lights go out. Then, they cycle through both shortwave & longwave florescent lights. The minerals react differently to the varying wavelengths. They seem to glow.

Top: A visual representation of the hardness scale of minerals.
Bottom: The kids can even test the hardness scale themselves.

Also on display are examples of how minerals are used in our everyday lives.

Synthetic Bismuth from Germany
To be honest, I have know idea what that means, but I thought it was super cool.

The lady on the left is carved from jade. The piece on the right is agate & from Beijing.

Mt. Hood Aurora Borealis carved from contra luz opal by Thomas Harth Ames.

Dennis & Mary Murphy Petrified Wood Gallery

Carved Lewis and Clark

Bottom Left: The green stuff is Pyromorphite. Found in France.
Bottom Right: Wulfenite. Found in Arizona.

Recently a letterbox was hidden at the museum. Of course, we had to find it.

The rare, beautiful & famous ‘Alma Rose’ rhodochrosite. From Colorado.

Cut gems

Northwest Mineral Gallery

As you enter this building you are greeted by this huge opal filled thunderegg found in Oregon. The thunderegg is Oregon’s state rock.

Mesolite. Found in Washington

Another good sized Thunderegg. These rocks are dull on the outside, but beautiful inside.

These thundereggs are about fist size, a more typical size.

Oregon’s state gem, sunstone.

I loved these 3 paintings showing the process of a petrified forest.
Top: “Before Petrification: A forest, including fallen logs is depicted. Volcanoes are erupting in the distance. A lake separates the forest from the volcanoes, and the lakes water cools the lava.”
Middle: “During Petrification: Logs are buried under lava (basalt) and a top layer of soil has developed, implying a long passage of time since burial. The overlying basalt and soil create anaerobic environment preventing the wood from decomposing. Silica rich water seeps down through the soil and basalt to the wood and precipitates microcrystalline quartz (agate/chert/jasper) and/or opal. Other minerals/elements in the water (eg iron) cause the coloration.”
Bottom: “After Petrification: A new landscape exists and erosion has now exposed the now petrified wood to the surface.”

Outside

Left: There is a huge rock pile outside. The kids each got to pick one to take home.
Right: Farm Girl was sweet and gave me her rock to put around our pond. It’s sitting next to a love rock.

My kids love this Rock Museum. We’ve visited it a few times and I’m sure we’ll visit it again.
To see what others are sharing for the month of October check out write31days.com

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This spring the kids & I tried out a new activity: letterboxing. I had vaguely heard about it and decided to look more into it.

Well, it’s a treasure hunt similar to geocaching, involves rubber stamps & takes us to new places. Win, win, win!

JOURNALS

The first thing we did was make journals. The letterbox treasure is a rubber stamp to ink in your journal.

STAMPS

We also carved our own stamps. We use these stamps to ink in the log found at the letterbox. You can choose to make just one stamp for your family. You can also choose to use a store bought stamp. Or, you can do what we do, which is have one stamp for each kid. Whichever kids are with me stamp their image in the logbook we find.

SLEUTHING

We had our equipment, now it was time to find those letterboxes. We use both Letterboxing.org & Atlas Quest to search for clues.

Top: Farm Kid1 grabbing our first letterbox find.
Bottom Right: That first letterbox was Benny Beaver at the Oregon Garden.
Bottom Left: The Benny Beaver logbook was full, but they had a second logbook available. So, we stamped in that one.

Be sure to bring your own ink pad, as many letterboxes don’t have them.

I will admit, it is a bit of a process getting our 4 logbooks stamped & the kids 3 stamps in the found logbook.

Four of the letterbox stamps we have found. I typically add the name of the letterbox & the date we found it to my journal. I have seen others add info about who they were with or what they were doing. I kinda like that; maybe I’ll start including more to my journal.

My children enjoy letterboxing, but I’m afraid I might enjoy it even more. I like adding a treasure hunt to our outings & am usually impressed at the quality of stamps we find.

The only downside is that we get skunked often. We don’t find the letterbox we’re searching for about half the time. It’s frustrating, but then it makes the ones we do find that much more special. I think it’s a combination of our sleuthing skills needing improvement, as well as the websites not keeping up to date on missing letterboxes. It seems not near as many people log letterboxes as geocaches, so there just isn’t much info out there about a particular letterbox. Also, as of today, there is not an app for my droid phone. This makes it trickier to double check certain things while out searching.

That being said, I still enjoy this activity very much and hope to add many more stamps to my journal.

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On a fairly sunny day in May, the kids and I spent the day exploring sites in the Columbia Gorge.

COLUMBIA GORGE INTERPRETIVE CENTER

Although I wanted to see other things, my main reason for going to The Gorge that day was to visit the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center. So, we went there first.

The Interpretive Center is on the Washington side of the Columbia River, but I had planned to drive most of the way on the Oregon side, up I-84. Even though, for the most part, I knew where to go I still turned on Google navigation. When I got closer to Portland, Google Maps changed my route. I don’t know why, but I followed it. It now had me crossing the Columbia River in Portland and driving the rest of the way on the Washington side, on SR-14, part of the Lewis & Clark Highway. This was my first time driving up The Gorge via Washington.

BRIDGE OF THE GODS

After touring the Interpretive Center, we drove over the Bridge of the Gods to get back to Oregon. As well as being a cool looking bridge, it is also part of the Pacific Crest Trail.

Cheryl Strayed ended her PCT travels here, as she tells in her book Wild. She was a nut & probably never should have hiked that trail as inexperienced as she was. But, it is a great story about not only her journey on the PCT, but also her journey through life getting her where she is now. It’s inspiring. I can’t wait until the movie comes out.

PACIFIC CREST TRAIL

Just over the bridge, in Oregon, is the little town of Cascade Locks. Here, we hiked a short way on the Pacific Crest Trail in search of a letterbox. Which, we found. Yay! One day we will hike more of this trail.

CASCADE LOCKS

We found another letterbox not far from the sign.

I’ve only been to Cascade Locks once or twice before, and I remember getting ice cream cones from this place. So in adding to that memory, I treated the kids. It was a warm day, perfect for licking ice cream.

BONNEVILLE DAM

BONNEVILLE FISH HATCHERY

From the dam, we went to the Bonneville Fish Hatchery.

MULTNOMAH FALLS

Our last stop of the day was a quick visit to Multnomah Falls.

Multnomah Falls is the highest year round waterfall in Oregon. Second largest in the US. The Upper Fall plummets 542 feet. The Lower Fall is 69 feet.

A few months prior a boulder fell through the Benson Bridge. This bridge allows you to continue your hike across the Falls and up to the top. The bridge was being repaired, so it and the trail were closed. It is now open, though.
The furthest we could go up the trail was to this observation point, which was fine since I didn’t want to spend a long time at the Falls anyway.

Excerpt from the journals of Lewis & Clark, April 9, 1806
“we passed several beautifull cascades which fell from a great hight over the stupendious rocks & the most remarkable of these casscades falls about 300 feet perpendicularly over a solid rock into a narrow bottom of the river on the south side. . . . several small streams fall from a much greater hight, and in their decent become a perfect mist which collecting on the rocks below again become visible and decend a second time in the same manner before they reach the base of the rocks.”

It was a long, fabulous day. I don’t even remember the kids arguing much.

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With letterboxing in our future, I wanted the kids to create their own stamps.

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There are only 2 things needed to carve a stamp: a carving tool & the material to carve. Forever ago I had to buy the carving tool for a college art class. I’ve never used it since, but for some crazy reason I still have the tool. I ordered the carving block from Amazon.

TRANSFERRING THE DESIGN

We were studying Japan at the time, so I chose to carve Japanese symbols for my sample stamps.

I printed symbols from the internet. Then, with the printed side facing a window, I traced the backside of the print with thick pencil lines.

I cut a piece of the carving block slightly larger than the symbol. Then placed the cut block up to a window. On top of the block I placed the paper, printed side facing me. Then, I traced the symbol with a pencil. The pencil lead on the other side of the paper transferred to the carving block where I traced.

The finished stamp needs to be a reverse of what you want the actual inked print to be. Keep this in mind when determining which side of the paper gets transferred onto the carving block.

The kids skipped this step & drew their designs right on the the carving block.

CARVING THE STAMP

Grab your carving tool & start getting rid of the areas you don’t want in your printed design. For me, this was everything outside of the pencil line.

My carving tool has a couple different sized tips. On my first stamp I used the broader tip first. I later realized it was easier to use this tip last.

Bottom Left: The smaller tip. I used this to carve the details. It seemed easier to carve the details first, then get rid of all the extra stuff with the broad tip.
Middle Right: The larger tip.
Bottom Right: My first stamp almost complete.

I prefer a polished look, so I was hoping to leave my stamp in its square shape. I quickly realized that just wasn’t going to work. All the extra stuff kept wanting to print even though I carved it away. So, I cut off the excess part of the block.

The stamp also printed much better once I mounted it to a small piece of foam core.

KIDS CAN DO IT, TOO

Top Left: I gave the kids a small piece to practice on first.
Right: Then they drew their design on the carving block & got to carving.
Bottom Left: We all jabbed ourselves with the carving tips. They are sharp. It’s a no brainer to realize you shouldn’t carve toward your fingers. But, somehow we all did it.

Left: Farm Girl’s finished star stamp. She chose to leave many of the lines outside the star.
Right: Farm Kid1 chose to make a LEGO minifig head dreaming about lego bricks.

Left: It took a few tries to get rid of most of the extra lines on the outside of his design. He’d stamp, then carve a little, then cut off a bit, then stamp again, then carve more.
Right: Eventually, he decided he carved enough & had his finished product.

This was fun not only for the kids, but also for me. I know we all want to carve more stamps. And, we will – hopefully, sooner than later.

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We’ve gone geocaching many times & decided it was time to try letterboxing.

The first thing we each needed for our letterboxing adventures were journals. Of course, there’s always the option of buying a journal. But I like the cost of making our own much better, so that’s what we did.

We used the instructions at Layers of Learning.

THE COVER

I tore paper bags into a rectangle shape. Then the kids crumpled the rectangle.

Next they rubbed crayons on the crumpled paper.

When they were done coloring their cover, I wet them just a bit & put them in the oven to melt the crayon wax. Honestly, melting the was didn’t work as well as I was hoping. Probably just doing the rubbing would have been good enough.

After the covers cooled we used stamps & oil pastels to decorate them.

For the most part, the kids went for an abstract look.

I opted for a minimalist approach.

THE PAGES

I used regular copy paper, folding 4 sheets in half & sewing a line on the crease. I made four sets of these for each journal.

Then I stacked the four paper sets together &, using a hammer, nailed a hole through the stacked paper. Each place I needed a hole for sewing the cover & paper together I used the hammer/nail technique. This section is described much better at Layers of Learning.

SEWING THE COVER & PAGES TOGETHER

Next, I played around with where exactly I wanted to place the paper on the cover. Once I figured that out I placed the paper on the cover. Then, came the hard part.

Why this was so difficult, I don’t know. It seems so simple. But, I had a heck of a time with it.

I liked the look of the binding on the example at Layers of Learning, so I wanted to replicate it.

I used embroidery thread and a needle to sew the cover & paper together. The outside turned out the way I wanted, but the first & last pages don’t look too tidy. The middle pages look ok, though.

Our completed journals.

I had originally thought I would sew buttons on the front cover to help hold the cover closed. But, after a couple days the journals quit trying to open on their own. So, I didn’t mess with it.

We’ve gone letterboxing a couple times & so far these journals are working out great.

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The kids & I ventured a bit south yesterday to visit The Oregon Garden. This was a first time visit for all of us.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect. We didn’t have time to explore the entire garden, but what we did see we enjoyed very much. It was a great place to explore with my kids. We had fun seeing the birds, squirrels, snakes, frogs, salamanders & bugs. I’ll admit, not all of it was knock-your-socks off gardening. But, we did have a great time & I enjoyed seeing the many different garden styles.

AMAZING WATER GARDEN

Chilean Gunnera
The leaves on this interesting plant caught my attention.

The kids spotted many salamanders in the pools of water.

We also saw a snake hunting frogs in the water. Things like this could entertain my kids all day.

TRAM RIDE

We took a tram ride to the back side of the garden. Then walked our way back. The tram driver was full of information about the various plants & gardens.

According to the tram driver, many of the garden areas are being kept up by various sources. He told us a story about this house & that it is now owned (or at least partly owned) by Better Homes & Garden Magazine. I found that curious.

REDISCOVERY FOREST

A very well managed demonstration forest area. It was beautiful and had lots of information. However, it was a bit too well kept to be an accurate representation of what our forests look like. We live in the hills of the Coast Range and there is a lot more depth in the plants than what is shown here.

Many Christmas trees throughout the country are grown right here in Oregon. We have a few friends that have Christmas tree farms. As part of the Rediscovery Forest, rows of Christmas trees were on display.

CHILDREN’S GARDEN

If I had to pick a favorite part of the Oregon Garden, this would be it. I adored all the whimsy.

Left: Mrs. & Mr. Potts
Right: Dolphin topiary

Awesome bench. Awesome weather vane.

Of all the gardens, the one idea I’m most likely to use at my own house is probably unconventional. I’ve had the idea of making a hobbit house for the kids for a little while now. But, seeing this one in person convinced me that we totally need one. My immediate reaction was how much our goats would love to climb on it. We have two piles of dirt that need rehoming & we need permanent housing for our goats. It’s a no-brainer to combine the two & make the shelter for the goats a hobbit house.

AND MORE…

Avondale Redbud
The one plant/tree that I wanted to come home with. I love the magenta color.

Silverton Market Garden
One area displayed different ways to grow a variety of crops. There were trellises with grape vines & raised beds ready to be planted. I, of course, was happy to see a chicken coop.

Left: The 400 year old Signature Oak. It is one of Oregon’s heritage trees.

LETTERBOXING

The kids & I like to search for letterboxes. We found a couple at the Oregon Garden. Yay!

The kids enjoyed this garden so much & wanted to stay longer, but as it was we were going to be a few minutes late for Farm Girl’s gymnastics class. We will definitely need to visit again. I’m thinking maybe even this summer. I’d love to see the gardens in full summer bloom.

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