Smith Rock Urges Portland Not To Visit
DMV says renew your tags in July. Planting Marigolds. Gardening in May showers. Oregon State Parks reopen, Smith rock urges Portland not to visit.
Smith Rock Urges Portland Not To Visit
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Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. appreciate you guys tuning in. I think it’s May 16. Today 2020 of everybody’s doing well, and I think this accounts for like the first, the first full day after the 15th, which marks the beginning of phase one reopening here in the Oregon area. I guess a lot of other states are sort of entering into the same kind of thing with the beginning of their reopenings. And starting up. I think the start of the I think it’s like a lot of retail stores. I don’t know what’s still restricted. I think there’s still like a number of private businesses that can’t really can’t really get started, it seems like a lot of restaurant stuff is still kind of held back, was it gyms or something? Maybe that’s the kind of held back? It seems like, it seems like a lot of places are really kind of getting going. But maybe it’s like California, I keep hearing news out of there probably because, you know, there’s so many people in that area that that are, you know, producing media and stuff. But I keep hearing kind of strange rules out of the lockdown that sort of continues to go on and the LA County area and along like the California coast and that area. So it’s kind of interesting to see how there’s such a varied approach and the way that they’re they’re sort of bringing stuff back. What is it like Arkansas you can have? I’m gonna have a concert, or something. I think there’s a place trying to drive in concert idea sounds kind of fun, really, you know, everybody pull up in a car. It always just sounds like a good idea, I guess when there’s not a pandemic going on. So there’s maybe less fear than that. But But yeah, that sounds fun. Driving concert, I don’t know. Or I think there’s a limited seating in places for for some venues now that I think is Max, like maybe 150 people swept some places to try and some of those Midwest areas, I think maybe like Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, I think some areas over there kind of try and some, some live events stuff out. I’m not sure what it is for restaurants, and a lot of places still seems like social distancing standards are what’s required. And a lot of those places I hear about restaurants operating in, like 25% capacity, and maybe 50% capacity. But even still, that just doesn’t seem economically, like it’s kind of work, I didn’t really spend a lot of time working in restaurants. But even still, I have enough tangential experience with the restaurant industry to know that those margins aren’t really wide enough, when you’re making food, to if you were, if you were just supporting yourself on 100% capacity before all this, there’s really not a good reason that that you’re going to support your business on 25% capacity for the next foreseeable future. I mean, gosh, like, it just seems like you’re gonna operate at a loss for six months, or more, I don’t know if anybody can really handle that, especially after a big dip like this, you know, it’s not going to be a better economic time after this for for a lot of those kinds of industries, or you know, just so there’s like a rate limit on the amount of customers that you can have at any given time. So that seems to be a problem. I don’t know how they’re really going to handle that. They don’t know, there’s venues and stuff to try to come back, it seems like there’s a lot of people just trying to do it to, to try and jump back in and be the first people competing again. So I guess in that standard, I understand I understand it, but it’s sort of strange, I have to see what like department stores and stuff are doing I think, you know, obviously grocery stores that remained open and so a lot of places that I would kind of hop into, in and out of regularly on a weekly basis had been open, you know, kind of throughout this whole time and have almost forgot about you know, like, do I need to go to a clothing store? Or was there something at a shoe store or mall there’s something you need to go through, you know, the thing that came up is on my truck, I gotta get my new tags for like the passenger registration stuff until What is it 2022 that you know that two year registration that comes up so I think I bought my truck now four years ago. Wow. That was like what may may 6, I think, I think it was the day after Cinco de Maya and it looked like the guy at the bank that was handling like the payment when I was making the the transfer of funds between my ownership or you know, like the other guys ownership to my ownership of the vehicle. The guy that was doing it behind the counter looked pretty pretty hungover. I was thinking, oh yeah, it was Cinco de mayo yesterday. I guess I got to take it easy on this guy. But that was four years ago yeah that I bought the bought the Colorado, and I’ve been driving around since, and so yeah, now I got to now I gotta buy new tags for it. So I had the letter in the mail a couple weeks back it was sort of before most of the pandemic lockdown stuff it started I think it was in early March that I first got my paperwork probably should have mailed it in at the time but but it was looking to be the day that during this period of the state of emergency things like car registrations and driver’s license expirations are
I guess being handled on a case by case basis but genuinely being treated with an amount of leniency. So have that to look forward to, I guess that, yeah, if if you had a registration lapse during the time, the pandemic, you really asked to not participate in going to the DMV, I think they’re closed in all cases. And I think there’s maybe like one or two spots that are having, by appointment only type of events going on, there’s some information on the page for the Oregon DMV, and there’s probably information generally, state by state and stuff, like in Georgia, they’re saying, like, if you were, if you were 16 year old or coming on to be a 16 year old, and you had an appointment to get your driver’s license scheduled, I think you just you just get to drive now, you don’t need to be licensed or something like that can’t come in and get a license. And I guess there was a need to, to whatever decision making they they had come to there was a need for those people to have access to drive, I guess, during this emergency, you know, probably in a lot of those places. Like I don’t know if this is the case, I don’t know if we’re talking about Atlanta, Georgia here, but, but it seems like out in the sticks. Even out here, you know, in the farm country in Oregon and stuff, you know, you’re 13 or 14, and you’re kind of learning how to how to move a cart, you know, how to move, you know, some kind of utility vehicle around a property when you’re you’re trying to do maintenance and stuff. I was driving a golf cart around all the time at the time I was 910 or something like that. And then that kind of escalated into like a farm truck or work truck by like a later age, I was learning to drive when I was I guess like a real vehicle. It was still like when I was 15. But yeah, it seems like you would need to kind of have access to that. So yeah, if you weren’t able to get into a DMV to get any kind of licensing, I guess it’d be nice to roll your permit over to a license, or maybe it’s something like roll your I don’t know, roll into just have it a permanent without having to worry about it. Who knows. But it seems like yeah, that was something they were trying over, you know, in different states have different rules, as we’re finding out pretty clearly, I guess, in the last couple months. But over here, I found out the passenger registration is is not required to be updated, I guess, when I was looking at that to the governor Kate Brown had extended the state of emergency. It’s kind of a few different things going on, you know, there’s the stay at home orders. And then there’s also the governor’s emergency powers that are established when they issue a state of emergency analysis. And that gives them access to federal funding for the emergency so that it doesn’t have to come out of the state budget. Is that what it is? It’s something like that. I don’t know, I don’t understand governance. But the state of emergency order, I think was extended into, like July 6, I think is what it was at latest kind of perhaps could be extended further than that originally, you know, when all this stuff started, it was you know, 15 days to flatten the curve March 15 to April 1. And that pretty quickly expanded into what we’ve been experiencing now, which you know, it could go in no other way. Right? When Has it ever been that? Oh, yeah, just 15 days of this. And it’ll be we’ll wrap it all up all the loose ends. We’ll handle it in 15 days. So I guess that never happens. It didn’t happen this time either. And what do you know, there’s like, complications and communication, limited amounts of supplies for things that seem necessary now. This seems like that’s, that’s like how it goes. Every time there’s a big national emergency. What was that movie like? where it was, it was covering the Russian soldiers and the world war two front. And it was like kind of the front lines. The scene was, and you know, one person it’s in factual history, right. But one person got a gun than the person next to him got a box of ammo and no gun. Right. So it just seems like yeah, that will be they only had they only had enough for one of each, you know. So Yikes. It seems like that’s kind of just how it goes sometimes. So unfortunately, we’re not in that kind of like, we’re not in that kind of hot water. It seems a lot better than that. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been as problematic as maybe we maybe first anticipated Hawaii. So I don’t have to worry about my check registration. You guys are excited about that. I was thinking I had to go to the DMV.
I don’t have to.
It’s cool. This last week, I’ve been doing a bunch of gardening stuff. The weather kind of turned a little bit to the Rainier side of saying so I don’t know, I was kind of discouraged from doing some camping stuff that I might have wanted to do or really I’m trying to figure out some time to get on the eastern Oregon and make it to a few of the more distant spots that I haven’t been to in a while. And it’s a tricky time of year because it’s like I don’t know what it is. So what am I saying? When it’s real cold in the winter, some of the pasturelands stuff isn’t really out, but it’s real cold. So like the ticks aren’t out as much the mosquitoes, I desert mosquitoes, yikes, they’re not out as much. Some of those things go a little easier when it’s colder earlier in the year. And then later, when it’s more towards summer, it’s a little bit easier with the environment that you’re dealing with, it’s not as harsh or extreme or cold, you know, you’re not freezing all the time. But there’s like a few other harsh conditions of heat that you have to deal with. So there’s kind of like a few different pockets that you can hit. And right now it’s difficult to because you know, it’s like, it’s, it’s, it’s the more wet season over there, you know, it’s not raining, now, the snow is probably melted off. But we will Yeah, there’s like a bit of rain, that’s, that’s still falling this time of year. Some of the areas out there, they dry up real fast in the summary. So what you would normally find the beach is trial and out there, this time of year, it’s a flat like low lying area, it’ll kind of turn to this, this Marsh or like sometimes a lot of these areas, it almost looks like a lake or something, you know, it’s like a one foot, it’s like one foot deep or one or two or three inches deep for most of it. And maybe it maxes out at six inches deep at the center. And, or just these areas that turn real marshy and then after a week or so you know that water sinks to the ground and just grass rises up from that. But this time of year, it can be real, real tricky out there and some spots don’t and then they, you know the texts get really bad. And it seems like April and May be part of may two. Not a big fan of those. or other weird little stuff out there guys remember find like a scorpion out there in Eastern Oregon. Like a real like a tiny one. I was probably like three inches, three inches or so sad at night with a flashlight as like guys. That’s another scorpion. I don’t need to see any of that stuff. But yeah, we’re trying to find some time to go out to Eastern Oregon. But the weather instead of is kind of turned a little bit. So that might be a week or two before I do that. And it’s Yeah, it’s just kind of been a weird time with a bunch of that stuff. I was looking at a thing where I think it was on Oregon live there. They’re getting to the point like we were talking about a bit ago where we’re even on the last podcast. So there’s some public lands that are reopening across Oregon. And there, they’re open. They’re opening up the state parks, I guess pretty soon or like the state public lands. But there’s still like asking sort of strange rules about that. I think there was something about how they’re going to, they’re going to open up Smith Rock State Park, north of bend that rock climbing area. But they’re saying that they’re opening it for locals only is sort of what they’re listing. And there was an article in the Oregonian that said that Portlanders are not welcome. Oh, okay. I don’t know how enforceable that is, or how that’s really structured. Part of what was advised in the language was that you’re you’re not supposed to travel more than 50 miles from your home for outdoor recreation. I don’t, I don’t know if that’s the rule or regulation, or what’s really understood is Oregon has really just reopened hunting and fishing to out of state residents.
So I mean, this app does that line up, you can come in from Utah and hunt. But you can’t go from Portland to somewhere out in Eastern Oregon, and hike or walk around or go to an open State Park seems like if you’re within your own state, you’re you’re in your state, you know, they should have made it smaller states that they wanted you to not travel that much. So I don’t know, I understand if they want to lock down the state or try and keep you more confined to that area. But it seems a little strange if you are reopening if you’re closing. Close. You know, but if you’re reopening, and it’s open. I don’t know. It sounds like it’s open. I think there’s a there’s a number of places that are kind of concerned about it with kind of some good reason. And really, I’ve been kind of concerned about this as a growing problem. For me, really, I think, you know, it’s just gonna be escalating as everybody’s kind of been cooped up for a long time. Anybody that wants to get out has been stuck kind of thing and maybe they can’t get out and I think real soon like this weekend, a really next weekend and the weekend after for Memorial Day weekend. I think it’s really going to flood a lot of a lot of places a lot of public land places that I’d want to go to just because the lessons like that somewhere real remote. These areas are all being stated as being reopened. People have been stuck inside for a long time. It’s Memorial Day weekend. So it’s kind of it’s socially known as the weekend to go out and begin camping. It’s probably going to be the first time that in Oregon, we’re really getting some nicer weather system. into the summer. And as many people that will still exist that don’t want to go outside related to the pandemic stuff, there’s going to be so many people that do want to go out that I think it’s really going to flat out a lot of a lot of areas in the next couple of weeks. And we’re probably going to see some weird regulatory reactions from that. You know, like, I don’t know, Kate brown kind of around Spring Break said, you know, go out, go, go to the beach, walk around, it’s important to get exercise and everybody did that. And he said, How dare you get out and go to the beach and walk around as much as he did. So then they closed it all down. So I think we’re going to kind of see something, something like that here soon to where they say, Yep, Oregon State Parks are reopening. But don’t go. Oh, and it’s Memorial Day weekend. And you all went. So now we’re we’re closing them again. So you don’t go? I don’t know. That’s speculation, I suppose. But yeah, it’s funny to see an article saying Yeah, Portlanders don’t come. So Oh, okay. Sure. I don’t know. It doesn’t sound fair to me. Yeah, state state parks and stuff, I’d probably stay away from a lot of state parks for a while. And just given their Well, they’re just they seem to be in sort of a regulatory flux. So it seems like things that you might understand as being acceptable. Public Land Use stuff at any other time. I might be a little different on the state lands right now. So yeah, if it’s a state park, like a, you know, a place with facilities and, and little trails and stuff that you have to pay a fee for? I don’t know; I might stay out of there for a little while. Like, what was it like silver Falls State Park? Smith Rock State Park some of those spots? I bet we’re gonna be we’re gonna be really overcrowded for a couple periods of time. They’re kind of recommended. If you don’t find parking in the parking lot, then you should go home because it’s too full. Okay, yeah. Well, I mean, that’s, that’s probably how it is most most of the time. So yeah, who knows? But I was saying earlier, yeah, I’ve been kind of doing a bunch of gardening stuff this week. That’s pretty exciting. So yeah, I went down and I got, I got a bunch of railroad ties to put together like a garden box, and then some soil amendment stuff. So I’m trying to fill that, and we got some starter plants to, you know, a couple different vegetables and, and, and things like that, that we’re going to try and grow through the summer. So we’re, yeah, we’re trying to carve out a garden box spot now. And we’ve been having like deer that come through pretty frequently. And we’re gated off too, but they still kind of come in from this lower section over there. That’s, that’s more opened up that we don’t really have control over. So well. I don’t know. We’ll see how those deer do but, but I also picked up I think of I think it chicken wire that I’m going to try and put across as like a fence for it. So kind of see how that goes. But that’s gonna try and protect him protect some vegetables from from the deer that we got. Yeah. So I don’t know that some of the gardening stuff that I’m up to you and been trying to do like different yard stuff, trying to clean things up. That’s very exciting. That’s kind of the same stuff that I’ve been up to for most of the week was just kind of chores like that. Well, isn’t driving here and there. I wanted to read this story. This was one in the Oregonian, and that will probably wrap up with but this one was
one that says more state parks reopened on the Oregon coast from Lincoln City to Florence. This is one of the things that a lot of the smallest, like kind of like we were talking about with Smith rock two and different state parks. Right. But a lot of the the smaller towns on the coast had been talking about how they have low just not enough facilities, a lot of those smaller towns, you know, Port Orford, and they don’t have a hospital, do they? So there’s that I guess problems with the amount of publicly available medical facilities for people that might end up getting sick or or exposing the community to Coronavirus. So even though they are reopening. They are saying they’re not reopening. Right, or are they? So this one from the Oregonian. I think just published yesterday on the 15th says more state parks reopened on the Oregon coast Lincoln city to Florence. The gradual reopening of the Oregon State Park System has now reached the Central Oregon coast. The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department reopened 25 State Park sites on the Central Oregon coast Friday, including popular beachfront sites like a seat ahead seal rock, South Beach, Jessie M. Honeyman and Drivers state parks, some parks have fully reopened, but many are open with limited facilities and services. Another 10 state parks along the Central Coast remain closed including Beverly beach, boiler Bay and roads and state parks. I don’t really know those places or roads and I know Beverly beach that’s a pretty popular one. The entire Oregon State Park System close to the public on March 23, to help stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Now as counties getting approved for the state’s phase one reopening plan, park officials are slowly reopening those parks to the public. Now it says a full list of Oregon State Park reopenings is posted online at Oregon State parks.org. So that’s probably a good spot to go if you’re looking for some information about the public land reopenings here in Oregon and go to the Oregon State Park site. I also like I was saying in the last couple ones I’d gone to the to the Oregon was it Oh, DFW the Fish and Wildlife site to see what those people were saying and what their closures were related to the COVID pandemic stuff and like I talked about, I mean, there was like individual individual choices for a lot of those National Park systems or BLM lands, but a lot of them would remain open to the some capacity. So yeah, it’s worth it to kind of go and find out some stuff, but yeah, now that it’s it’s reopening. There’s some stuff that is definitely reopening. So continuing with that article, many of Oregon’s most popular state parks remain close to the public, including all sites in the Columbia River Gorge and others close to Portland, like silver falls. Was this one Milo, MacGyver and subs stub Stewart. State officials continue to urge Oregonians to avoid non essential travel, including day trips, and for those in urban areas to not travel more than 50 miles from home to recreate. That’s an interesting sentence. And I don’t think this is a law, by the way. So thanks state officials, state officials continue to urge without making a law regulation. Oregonians to avoid all nonessential travel, including day trips. And for those in urban areas to not travel more than 50 miles from home to recreate. Is that like the one urban area of Portland? Is that what they’re talking about? Um, I don’t know if I’d trust that as a rule probably could get shut down. I think if you want to get out and you know, you could get out, you probably can this is what I was also thinking to is it might be a good time to get a fishing license or get a hunting license. I think they’re like, you know, 35 bucks, you can get the super pass or something for like 75 and get both of them. But
that gives you It seems like some rights to to be traveling around. I mean, even still, if you just kind of claim that as what your occupation is, while you’re out you probably get more leniency to but it seems like yeah, that those who are initiated seem to have more access now than than those who then just read this article. So yeah, it seems like if you had like a fishing license, and you’re traveling around and you went to a place to go fishing, because it’s an allowed activity, you could do that. It seems like an error. You know, like, like I was mentioning a minute ago, it’s like he can’t travel more than 50 miles from your home to recreate. But Oregon is reopened public lands to out of state, like hunting and fishing licence holders to come into state to use the lands for recreation purposes. So it seems like if outside people can do it, then certainly people who are in the state can go to travel to participate in those kind of activities, too. But I also understand that Yeah, maybe just traveling to a state park to go hike with 100,000 other people is probably a bad idea. Or, I don’t know, an undesirable idea at the time. And so people who visit state parks are encouraged to take precautions to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 official said visitors should wear face masks and bring their own hand sanitizer soap and water. Probably because the bathrooms are still going to be closed or strangely closed. Not a bad idea to bring hand sanitizers and soaps and water to outdoor places normally, but I don’t know if it’s going to be a big deal on this one. People are also asked to keep six feet apart of social distancing while out at Park sites and to leave one space between their car and the car next to them. Hmm, I don’t know about that one. Visitors are asked to recreate only with those in their household. Well, thanks for the information. Okay, so that’s the idea, I guess from the word of State Park reopening so it was the Oregon State parks.org was one of the sites you can go to to find out some of the information about the May 15 phase one reopenings of Oregon State Park public lands. Yeah, sounds fun. At least there’s a couple spots, open it up back like that. It seems like still a few places around Like the city parks and stuff, those are still all shut down. So I’m not in too much of a draw to go to any of these state parks really, you know, this is one of those things where you see this article. And this is one of the things where if you’re a little confused about the delineations of different public lands, it can be it can seem like, and this is what I had thought, and sort of the the layman’s view of it before, is that when I saw something like that, if, you know, state parks reopening, I would have thought, Oh, well, like they were closed before. And I guess the parks were, but I would have just sort of assumed that to be almost all public areas that you could go out to, or go outside to, or I wouldn’t have really known of places outside of just those limited areas of state parks. But I think like we talked about, on the last podcast, a lot of those national wildlife refuges were open, a lot of the wildlife viewing areas are still open wilderness areas are of course, still open. You know, there’s still a lot of things that were that were publicly accessible to go out on and go hiking on. And a lot of those places are going to be way less populated than their their state park counterparts. I think just because of the the notoriety that they have, I mean, you know, there’s, there’s good reason, really, I’d suppose why the Columbia River Gorge hikes are closed down right now, those get very busy during a lot of the year. And I just don’t know, if they could, they could handle that kind of use capacity right now. It just seems it seems like a lot of stuff. Same with silver falls or, or even Smith rock and some busy days like that, you know, I’m sure in the spring, it can be super busy out there. So if the reopening and there fell in the parking lot, it’s probably going to be busy enough. And it’s probably going to be busy with a lot of folks from Ben that haven’t been there in a while I understand the idea of people locally wanting to get out and go to those things. But it seems like an odd and just sort of beyond what is legally regulated for them to ask that people not go just for just for no reason. So I’m probably not going to go, but I guess it’s for my own reasons and stuff. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m going to try and get out a little bit before the Memorial Day weekend, which is when I’m kind of suppose it’s going to get a hit another maximum. And they’re going to probably try to and more sternly asked that people not go, which I’m not looking forward to. I don’t wanna follow this rule. I want to go. So I’m gonna wrap up the podcast around here and continue my day with cool gardening stuff outside like I was talking about earlier.
Do you have that to look forward to on the next podcast? Did I plant the miracles or not? Find out next time on The Billy Newman photo podcast. You can go to Billy Newman photo comm to see some of the other stuff. I’ve been working on some of the posts that put up some of the other podcasts that I’ve put together in past years as well.
And, yeah,
I suppose that’s it. I’m gonna try and go out and do some stuff for the weekend. Do some gardening like I was talking about, maybe I can get out and do some fun photo stuff. And that has something cool to talk about. That’s a little more photo news related. But thanks for tuning in to this episode of The doing photo podcast. This is Episode 146