We are in our last location in the US of A and have now been on the road for about 15 months. This time last year we were watching the Blue Bonnets of the Texas Hill Country spring into life, and now we are watching the flora and fauna of Oregon come to life after a long wet winter. We are in our house in Hidden Hills perched above McMinnville with a fabulous view from the deck across the valley to a 40 acre vineyard and the owner’s chateau – somewhat grander than our place. This move was far more relaxed as we only had to drive 30 miles from Tualatin, which we did in two trips, so were in place by April 1. We had fabulous weather for the move and our first few days at Hidden Hills – warm, sunny, with clear blue skies – which meant our move-in lunch of bread, cheese, and wine was on the large patio gazing across the valley. Just lovely and a fabulous way to start our time in the Willamette Valley.
April 2 our good friends Wishart & Kathy Robson came to spend the night on their way back home to Vancouver Island after selling the house in Palm Springs. Had a great evening spent mainly round the dining table as we ate mushroom and chicken carbonara, with salad and garlic bread. Wish & Kathy had brought some good wine from CA, which added to the OR Pinots we had, and made for a damn good dinner! They left early the next morning with the good news that we would be visiting them in their new house in a couple of weeks – yeah road trip!
Though we are only 10 mins drive from down town McMinnville our mountain retreat is quite remote. The final quarter mile or so of our private road, or rather track, climbs about 200ft through the pines to our little enclave of 4 houses, with ours being the largest. Once the holiday homes of the Antinucci family, but now rented out by David, the present owner. There is no television service, which we knew about this time, though there is a 50” Smart TV, so we came equipped with Rabbit, Roku, DVDs, a dart board, and a number of jigsaw puzzles. It took us about 5 days to get Roku up and running with extensive phone calls and emails to various tech support centres as getting Netflix, Amazon, Hulu etc., online required dealing separately with each entity. I’m sure the kids would have been in stiches at Dad and Ann battling modern technology! Anyway, we are now up and running on the entertainment front, the dart board is up on the back porch, and Ann has just finished her first 1000 piece jigsaw.
Our house came complete with a chicken! The sole survivor of a number of chickens that David Antinucci’s son had brought to Hidden Hills and had basically become pets. Clucky had set up home on the back porch and made it her own by crapping all over it! David came up with his power washer and restored the porch to human rather than chicken use, but Clucky remained on the loose and was continually at the back door demanding food and intent on restoring the porch to chicken heaven. After a couple of days I manage to grab dear Clucky and pop her into her chicken run, rather than into the pot as Debbie was worried about. To thank me she provided an egg the next evening – good Clucky.
This time we have joined two sports centres – Ann is a member of the McMinnville Aquatic Center so she can do her water aerobics, while I joined Excel Fitness, the best of the three gyms in town. Not a patch on the Stafford Club, and an old school gym, but it has all I need to try and stay in shape and the people are nice. We continue to have The Oregonian delivered but now instead of it arriving on the doorstep, as was the case in Tualatin, it is now left in the mail box at the bottom of the hill! On the days we get a paper I walk down the hill to collect it – 4 mins – and slog back up the hill – 61/2 mins. It’s so steep I have to stop half way up! Mind you it’s a lovely walk with a stream babbling away on the side, wild orchids on the verge, and the odd deer bounding through the trees. All good for staying in shape and the coffee tastes really good when I get back.
McMinnville has 4 grocery stores and a Walmart and like Sedona you have to shop at all of them to get what you want. Mind you, it’s amazing the difference in the supermarkets as we have moved west across the states, with the fresh produce getting better the further west we went. We stumbled across a local supermarket in Lake Oswego when we out to dinner on our last night in Tualatin, called Zaman’s. Think of Whole Foods/New Seasons on steroids and you’ve got it – they had 4 different types of local butters hand blocked and wrapped – amazing! It’s privately owned by the Zaman family and only has 3 stores in Portland. When we spoke to the manager she said they pride themselves on selling the very best of local produce, and if they ever see any of these items in the local chains they will not stock them anymore, which certainly puts them in the “whole pay cheque” bracket!
Apart from getting the house sorted we have managed to hit one of the named vineyards – Soter. Jim Bethel lent me the Haeger’s North American Pinot Noir bible and I have listed the top 15 producers in the Willamette Valley, of which Soter is one. By appointment only, so we booked for a “structured” tasting at 11.00am. We were given very detailed instructions how to get to the vineyard as there are no signs! We were met as we walked up to the tasting room by the manager with glasses of their pinot noir rose – a very good start. After a tour of the main building were walked down to a small cottage that was our own tasting room for the morning! Soter Vineyards has developed into North Valley Vineyard and Mineral Springs Ranch. NVV has 34 acres under vine while the ranch is something over 250 acres producing its own produce and meat. The wines were excellent with their Mineral Springs 2012 White Label Pinot Noir being outstanding – well it is $100 a bottle. After that we had lunch at Horse Radish in Carlton – known for its home cooked meats and local cheeses. Talk about big sandwiches! We both had soup and half a sandwich – mine beef and Ann’s turkey – about 4-5 inches high and packed with in-house cooked meats. The soup was roasted red pepper and quite delicious. Love the food in wine country!
As this goes to press we are about to leave for Vancouver, BC for the Met Police A Division Drop Outs Reunion. Thanks to Jenny and catching up with Neil and Lesley, Ian Roberts, Neil Roberts, Peter Taverner and I will gather at Ian’s house to celebrate our time in the Met’s Government Protection Squad back in the early 60s, and sharing a flat at 44a Russell Road, Kensington. Peter, who now lives in Queensland, and Ian I haven’t seen for 52 years, which is quite a long time and makes you feel bloody ancient! I gather Ian is a great cook and bakes his own bread, cakes, and pies and is a dab hand at curries. My love of curries was started by Ian and Peter, as their East African upbringing meant curry tiffin on Sundays, and that’s where they ordered and I ate! Many a chuckle at my red face and the sweat dripping off the end of my nose as worked my way through many Indian meals with them. As you all know that hasn’t changed. After the reunion we going across to Nanaimo, Vancouver Island to stay with Wish and Kathy for a couple of days. I would say to detox, but there is little chance of that with those two! Then we are getting a ferry to Port Angeles, on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, to meet up with Steve Schermerhorn who lives in Sequim, the home of the Dungeness crab. Steve is and old DoS hand and was best man at our wedding on Bali and whom we haven’t seen since our Jakarta days. Then it’s back to Hidden Hills for some R&R!
theangryanglo 