Klamath – Lake View – Klamath Part Two

Boy the Scanlan’s bed is comfy! Nearly makes up for the -9 centigrade outside and the 5am start to get us to the Klamath Sunrise Club presentation. The team did really well and we got another good response for our vignettes on each of our islands.

Olivier, Ine and I then went to the Klamath County Museum to meet with Todd Kepple the Museum Manager and Lynn Geche the curator who gave us a great discussion and tour. Here they are facing some serious issues with funding and lack of trained personnel but have a great new interactive children’s exhibit. I was greatly impressed by the Baldwin Hotel Museum that they also manage and of which we got a tour even though it was closed for the season.

The Baldwin was a hotel up to the 1970’s when it was taken over a by the county which was then relatively well off with logging monies. Because of the frugality (cheapness) of the owners, not much was changed in the hundred or so years of its existence. Not great for the guests but fantastic for historians of today. Now rooms are either kept as they were in the hotels heyday or as exhibits of various aspects of the town of Klamath Falls. Olivier was impressed with original movie posters, including Gone With the Wind and I was impressed with the secret spyholes bored into the doors of some of the guest rooms!

Then my host Jennifer transported us to Lake View, a frontier town about an hour and a half from Klamath. Here we were met by Sean Gallagher the school superintendant, a very friendly guy who took us up to Black Cap and a bird’s eye view of the town. It’s called Tall Cowboy Country because of how high it is at over 5000 feet above sea level. Of course Sean lost some cool points by refusing to go back down the mount via an ATV track that went straight down. Although his assistant did say that I got off lucky as he is known to love a dare!

Bill and Marti Schraeder were my hosts – a retired couple with a large personal art collection (I think I know why they were chosen to be my hosts). They welcomed me with a fantastic three course meal that started with stuffed mushrooms, followed by salmon and asparagus and topped off by lime cheese cake. Eat your heart out Mum – I know how you love salmon.

This lovely couple have two great dogs and a disappearing cat and were really interested to find out about Barbados and to share their own experiences. I had a lovely time with them, especially discussing their collection and Marti’s eclectic jewellery - Thanks Bill and Marti!!