Champoeg SP, OR

Champoeg: yet another name that defies the rules of  phonetics.  It’s pronounced sham-POO-ee.  Allegedly, it’s a bastardized Kalipuya Indian word meaning a carrot-like, edible root – or the place where such roots are found.  The common name of the plant is yampah.  Tomorrow, I’m gonna grab my trusty trowel and go yampah hunting.  If you have a favorite yampah recipe, please forward it to me.

It’s a large park, about 20 miles southwest of Portland.  Besides the campgrounds, it has cabins, yurts, bike trails, a museum, historic buildings, boat dock and large open grassy areas.

Trish is quite the happy camper, now that we have enough storage space for her fabric boxes, iron, pint-size Janome sewing machine and assorted quilting tools.  She spends lots and lots of hours measuring and cutting and ironing fabric, making hundreds of little fabric squares that she will piece together when we return home.  She’s made numerous lovely quilts in recent years.

I watch her do her quilting thing and think, good grief, how can she stand it, doing the same thing over and over and over?  It would drive me bat-shit crazy in a matter of minutes!  Ranger and Artie don’t appear to find it very exciting, either.

Champoeg is where, in 1843, Oregon pioneers gathered and voted in favor of forming a provisional government and wrote a petition to the US government requesting recognition of same.  Champoeg was a relatively large settlement at the time and many thought it would eventually be the territorial/state capital.  The Willamette River threw a wet blanket on that: in December, 1861, the River rose 52’ and wiped out the entire town.  It was not rebuilt.

This is a typical yurt except for the handicapped ramp.  Inside, there’s basic furniture including bunk beds.  It has electricity but no plumbing.  Light is provided by the central, round skylight and ‘windows’ of clear vinyl.  In the above picture, the privacy flaps are down so you can’t see the windows.