A Living Magazine - Day 42 - The Oregon of Species

I noticed that over the night, the dew had soaked the outside of my sleeping bag. The tarp was also completely wet. No water moisture came into the sleeping bag and even my own sweat eventually filtered out. That's why I love this bag, even if it is beginning to have zipper problems. Anyway...

I wanted to do a post that was mostly pictures, and this town was great for it. Let's just relax and take a tour of Salem!

There are a hundred varieties of apples around here. Some are smaller than a blueberry, and some are shaped like bell peppers...

This apple is about 1.5 inches long, and tastes almost citric,

with an aftertaste of rose. It wasn't especially sweet but it was sweet enough to enjoy. Not bitter.

This is a really great place to visit and the walker's path

goes right through it and into the large park.

The Bush Plant Conservatory Greenhouse..

Soil temperature and air temperature.

A Poster.

I found this a little odd, but cute...

Drying the dew off.

The Rooster.

And, the Bush House was in beautiful condition. Great architecture, lots of nice touches...

At the bottom of the hill was a soap box derby runway....

There are little canals everywhere...

Finally some true Morning Glories!

Plantains.

Never short of spiders.

I figured I'd check out the Capitol Building, since I was in the state capital...

Capitol Building

Facade entryway. Great marble, glows a bit in the sun.

Front right detail.

Front left detail.

It was the first state capitol building I'd seen without a dome. And, just in case you were wondering about official things, here they are...

About a block away was the YMCA building. One of the nicest outsides I'd seen, mostly because of the mosaics...

Wall art further down Liberty Street...

Where I'll be spending the night--not.

This is a fantastic mural at the library.

See how the plants in front blend with the ones in the painting?

The "Crescents". Very bland patio area. No plants, no color,

only cement and concrete, and a weird thing that is like a defective sundial.

Display inside the lobby area.

I worked for quite a while getting the last two posts up. The photos can take a long time, and the audio needed to be edited and tweaked. Clouds were rolling in, and it looked like there would be storm. But, nothing came of it. Intellicast said 0% chance of rain.

Still, you never know. I didn't even have a sleeping place yet. The library closed at 6:00 pm and I headed out. That's when I found this little bird, flapping around and tumbling over the patio. It was obvious to me that her neck was sprained or broken...

I made a little shelter of fresh leaves and left her there, where she fell asleep. I will try to check and see what happened later.

I just started walking down Commercial Street, east to Salem Heights. It was a solid 5 miles, but I had a hard time finding a place. It was oppressively hot, and all I could do was wait for the sun to go down...

I wandered all around the Walgreen's area, since there was a good field right behind it. But, they had cameras all over the place and it just wasn't gonna happen. In defeat, I began to walk back toward Salem proper. And, as I was walking by the Presbyterian church, I noticed a small hill with a flat, dark area about midway up. I went.

There was an unused section of walking trails. I found the most level one and nested down. For the hell of it, I tried getting online and it worked! I wrote for a while but got sleepy and climbed into the sleeping bag for what would be a short summer night's nap...

Salem Sleeping Place 2