It sure seemed like there were more people than last year and it seemed like everyone was having fun.

I really like all the vendors, food(naturally) and merchandise.  The “White Trash Boutique” was back for another year.  I’m guessing they make a lot of money at this event.  I’m just guessing!

There were quite a few tattoo/piercing shops setup, this one caught my eye because it had a full pricelist of all the piercings they could do:

I had to go home and google “Labret” and “Tragus”.   They weren’t as bad as I originally thought.  I also noticed if you get both nipples pierced, you get a $5 discount.  Score!

Of course there were a ton of bikes, trikes, and everything else.

I really liked this tan bike.  Not too flashy, and only $12500!

The kids got a kick out of this bike, it had what looked like real snakeskin accents on the seats.

Check out the gas cap!

We again had the BEST corn dog ever, then followed it up with some deep fried Oreos!

Fantastic!

The local cagefighting group was all setup, but we walked by 3 or 4 times and never saw anyone getting their ass kicked in there.  Kinda disappointing…

This ice cream shop had a cool old John Deere engine running their ice cream machines:

And there were swords for sale too!  Alas, no Frostmourne, though.

There was so much more I couldn’t take pictures of all of it, but I did find time to photograph these nice ladies offering free motorcycle washes.  How generous of them!  They’re like Mother Teresa!  Only blonder.  And more ass-ey.

The big finale was a concert by headliner “Uncle Kracker”.  We didn’t stick around for that, but the  “Original KISS Army” tribute band was pretty frickin’ cool.  I’m not even a KISS fan but these guys kicked ass and put on a great show.

How awesome is that?

We had a ton of fun.  The Jamboree is still going today, with vendors and food from 9am until noon.   There’s still time to get your tragus pierced!!!

It’s June, so you know what that means. Mining Expo! Wooooooooooo!

I’ve blogged about previous years.  And this year will be no different!  Today is the big day for the public to visit, so we’ll be on our way in a couple hours.  Why yes, I will come home with a giant  Bag o’ Swag.  Thanks for asking!

More info over at the ECVA site.

The route took us west through Tillamook then north on highway 101 to beautiful Rockaway Beach, OR.

Rockaway Beach is a small, quiet town, but my family has been going there every year for at least 25 years?  We stay in the same cabin every time, because it’s cheap and right on the beach.  Sounds great, right?

well, here’s 12-year-old ElkoSteve describing Rockaway (In Whiny Kid Voice):

This place is boooooooooooring! There’s no TV, it’s cold and rainy all the time!  The beds suck and there’s no dishwasher! Mom and Dad park the van and we have to WALK everywhere!  I’m scared of that bottle opener!  There’s only one arcade in the town and the games suck!  All we can do to pass the time is read and play cards.  Waaaaaah!

35-year-old ElkoSteve is much more comfortable here, but wow, do the beds still suck.  This is the view from the large window on the backside of the house:

Not bad for $50 a night, right?  Here’s the bottle opener young ElkoSteve was afraid of:

Freaky!  We were only there for one night, but we still had a lot of fun.

The dogs ran around on the beach like lunatics, pausing only for necessary activities:

It was a positively beautiful day, which is uncommon for the Oregon coast in May.

It turns out that there was a Kite Festival going on, with lots of kites (naturally) and food and craft vendors.  Rockaway Beach was hoppin’!

We left Rockaway on Sunday.  On the way back, we stopped in Tillamook for, what else, CHEESE!

I love Tillamook Cheese.  I’ve tried many other kinds, but Tillamook’s Medium Cheddar is, by far, the best.  We bought way too much of it, and I bought a little squishy loaf too.  First, unsquished:

Now SQUISH IT!

I can feel my stress level decreasing already.

We made it back home in time for my brother’s engagement party.  DaveKnows and Mile73 are so cute together!  While we were there, Ollie was accused of licking half the frosting off the cake.  Come on, does this look like the face of a cake-licker?

He’s so cute!  I think Ed licked the cake.  Yeah, it was Ed.

The kids went back to Elko with grandma on Monday, so the wife and I could pretty much do whatever we wanted.  Which meant girlie drinks, soccer, and pinball, of course!!!

That girlie drink is from dinner with Dave and Heather at The 5th Quadrant, the soccer game is, of course, the Portland Timbers against Montreal, and the pinball is none other than the Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade!  Possibly the best place to play pinball on the west coast!  I rocked that Demolition Man machine.

This post is getting very long, but there’s still a few things to talk about.  Almost there!

We absolutely had to visit Voodoo Doughnut after hearing about it on various Food Network shows over the last couple years.

Behold, the Bacon Maple Bar:

It was everything I hoped it would be.  Very very yummy.  If you look closely, you can also see the donut with Cap’n Crunch all over it (Captain My Captain) and the purple one is called the “Grape Ape”

For our final night in Portland, we met David and Heather as well as the wife’s friends Gary and Sara for dinner at some food carts in SE Portland.  The first one is called Potato Champion and we had some of the best poutine we’ve ever had!  The fries were outstanding and the gravy had an interesting tang to it, with lots of onions.  It was served steaming hot as you can tell:

Dave, put your iPhone down, there’s poutine to eat!!

For dessert we walked about 20 yards over to the Whiffies cart.

They are fried pies, similar to the Cornish Pasties sold at BJ Bull in Elko.  Whiffies are deep fried, though, which gives them a nice crispy, bubbly crust.  We tried the Barbecue Pork (fantastic!) the Strawberry-Rhubarb (phenomenal!) and the Chocolate-Peanut Butter (Freakin sweet!).  A fine ending to a long, happy trip.  We got to see lots of our friends and family that we’ve missed for years.  If we didn’t catch you this time, we’ll see you in August for the DaveKnows/Mile73 wedding!

Oh yeah, one last picture.  It snowed off and on while driving back to Elko, here’s a shot from the cascades.  See everyone next time!

I get yelled at if I don’t include a map of our trip so here it is!  We took 84 in from the east through Boise on the way there, then south through Bend and Winnemucca on the way back.

We took the boys out of school early on the 12th and left Elko around noon.  Because we brought the dogs this time and we weren’t too sure how they would do, we split up the drive into 2 days.  We drove up through Jackpot on 93 but instead of heading toward Twin Falls like we usually do, we drove west toward beautiful Buhl, ID.  A friend from work grew up there and told us it’s a great little town and a scenic drive so we decided to give it a shot.  The route took us into Buhl, which was cute, but the best part was the drive alongside the Snake River through some stunning scenery.  Of course we didn’t take any pictures, but trust me, there were waterfalls, cliffs, significant greenery, and animals aplenty.  We met up with I-84 around the town of Bliss and continued on our way.  We stopped for the night at the Holiday Inn in Ontario, Oregon.  The wife was feeling all congested from a cold she caught before we left and we remembered that Oregon requires a prescription to buy Pseudoephedrine (sudafed).  We could have headed back across the border but we ended up buying another product that didn’t work as well.  Curse you, Oregon and your meth-related laws! *shakes fist*

Alright, so we got up semi-early on the 13th and headed toward Portland.  We again passed the replica Stonehenge and didn’t stop to look at it.  One of these days kids, I promise.  The dogs got a quick stop in The Dalles to stretch their legs:

We arrived in Portland around 3:00pm.  Our first visit was with the wife’s grandmother, who is still hanging on at 93 years old.  We don’t know how much longer we’ll have her so it was great to see her again.

The first few days in Portland we stayed with some friends of ours, Jim and Joy and their family.  It was great seeing them after all these years!  Nothing too exciting happened, but my son did find a sweet frog in their backyard and we took some cool pictures with my wife’s new camera.  Check out the detail on that froggie!

Oooh, also while we were there, Jim fell on his bicycle and tore himself up good.  We only got pictures of his fingers but there were more body parts skinned up.  Shoulder, elbow, knee, etc. Hope you’re feeling better man!

mmmm…meaty!

So the main reason we were in Portland was for the wife’s cousin’s wedding.  I was tricked into going when I heard it was going to be held at the “Hostess” house in Vancouver, WA.  But I’d been bamboozled!  There was nary a Twinkie or Ding Dong to be found.  But there was cake.  No lie!  I especially enjoyed the topper:

The lucky couple’s vehicle was tastefully decorated as well.  Here are some highlights.  Click to enlarge!  er…maybe I shouldn’t have said that.

After the wedding we drove back out to Hillsboro where we had boarded the dogs at the PetSmart Doggie DayCare.  We found out that little Ollie had to be put in solitary because he was being mean to the other doggies and people.  He’s such a little stinker!  We bailed him out and headed toward the Pacific Ocean!

That’s all for now.  Part 2 will come soon, and include Rockaway Beach, kites, cheese, hot wings, donuts with bacon on them, poutine, fruity drinks, soccer, dogs on couches, pinball, and pie!  Stay tuned…

Used a Russian SKS 7.62×39 and a Remington 700 .22-250 (the larger holes)

I believe a blog update is long overdue.  After Boxer came back it seemed like he was the same old cat, but a few weeks ago we noticed he was losing weight.  We didn’t think much of it, but it became *really* visible when we had him shaved yesterday.  He was all skin and bones and the groomer said his little nipples were all yellow.  The wife took him in this morning, they ran some blood work and found his white blood cell count was way high and he’s down around 7 pounds!  (He was over 13 when we had him in last year.)  His liver was shutting down… We decided it was time to pull the plug, so around 10:15 this morning we had him put down.  We buried him next to the wife’s cat Ebony  out at the ranch in Ryndon.  RIP Boxer. 2001-2010

Inspired by www.portlandpoutine.com I decided to make my own at home, Elko-style!

The ingredients are very simple.  Here’s what we started with:

• Walmart Crinkle-cut fries ( I told you this was Elko-style)
• Hennings Cheddar Cheese curds from Wisconsin( but we won’t hold that against them)
• Heinz Classic Chicken gravy

We cooked up the fries just like the package directions, but added about 5 more minutes because we figured they needed to be good and crispy to hold up to the cheesy and gravy.  Looking back I think we could have gone a few minutes more.

Threw on the cheese curds and the gravy:

and VIOLA!  Poutine!

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?  The fam enjoyed it, but like I said before, the fries probably needed to be a little crispier.  And next time I’ll throw it under the broiler for a minute or two to make sure the cheese curds get nice and melty, they kind of glommed up on this one.  Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be?  I don’t know, I’m no expert.  My brother is!!!  www.portlandpoutine.com

We’re number 1!!!!  Go Nevada! 

What do we win?

We got our cat back!!!!

We lost Boxer back in MAY and we finally got him back.

We had put up posters around town and at the animal shelter, and the wife got a call this afternoon that they had a cat who looked a lot like our poster.  The wife sped down there and $50 later, we had our cat back!!!

He was found about a mile from our house wandering around a neighborhood.  His hair is all matted up but he is still a fatso, so he was definitely fed while he was gone.  We still figure somebody took him.

I take back half the stuff I said about him!