1,000 acres of flowers

	Mt. Adams from crest of Columbia Hills (photo by Darryl Lloyd)

THIS ON-LINE VALENTINE'S DAY AUCTION & RAFFLE ENDED AT 3PM ON FEB 11. THE WINNERS HAVE BEEN CONTACTED.

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Enter the Bainbridge Island Land Trust Valentine’s Day Silent Internet Auction & Raffle today. Your choice of two fabulous Valentine's Day gifts:

Columbia Gorge Wildflower Weekend. Win a chance to spend a romantic weekend at the Honeymoon Cabin at Breaks Ranch surrounded by the world-famous Columbia River Gorge wildflowers this spring. Come for a walk in the moonlight, come for a moment of solace, take your hosts' Breaks Ranch Great Circuit Hike: see 3 canyons in 3 hours with 5 mountains over a 6 mile hike…Biking and hiking on the 31-mile Klickitat Trail, or steelhead and salmon fishing, or whitewater rafting in the Klickitat River only three miles away…windsurf the Columbia 16 miles away…also, see windpower and wineries…Eastern Washington May Sunshine. The HoneyMoon Cabin is only a little more than 4 hours, by car, from the Winslow ferry dock, but it is a world away.

For more photos view 1,000 acres of Flowers photo album on BILT's Facebook page.

The highest bidder has been contacted.

Delicious Therapeutic Massage. Win a delicious 90 minute massage with Bainbridge Island licensed massage therapist Rhonda Henry. (By appt Tuesdays-Fridays, Sterling Place Building, 600 Winslow Way E., Suite 230, B.I., 206-780-5871) The highest bidder has been contacted.

The highest bidder has been contacted.

Winners of the Columbia Gorge Wildflower Weekends and Therapeutic Massages announced on Feb. 12. And there are two ways to win, ENTER TODAY.

CONTEST RULES:

This contest opens Jan. 29 and closes at 3:00 pm PST on Feb. 11, with winners announced Feb.12. There are two ways to win: 

The Silent Auction (Pool A): BILT will auction off 1 Columbia Gorge Wildflower Weekend and (as a separate item) 1 Therapeutic Massage. You can submit silent auction bids by email to landtrust@bi-landtrust.org.  Be sure to include your bid amount, which item you're bidding on, your name, phone and email address.  BILT will acknowledge your bid and will update on-line info concerning the current high bid for each item at least once each weekday during the contest.  The Grand Prize winner for each item will be the entry with the highest silent auction bid as of 3:00 p.m. PST on February 11. The highest bidders for each item have been contacted.

The Raffle (Pool B):  BILT will also raffle off 1 Columbia Gorge Wildflower Weekend and (as separate prizes) 2 Therapeutic Massages. Winners of these items will come from a raffle (Pool B) of everyone who donates $25 to BILT during the contest.  (Donate by cash, check or credit card, by mail, in person or on-line. Donations must be actually received in BILT office by 3:00 pm on Feb 11 to qualify.) Buy as many $25 chances for the Wildflower Weekend and Massages as you wish, increase your odds of winning! Entrants to the Silent Auction (Pool A), with silent bids of $500 or more, are automatically also entered into the Raffle (Pool B). The winners of our raffle have been chosen from a drawing and will be contacted.

So, remember, there are two ways to win a Wildflower Weekend of two nights in the Breaks Ranch’s HoneyMoon Cabin and/or a deliciousTherapeutic Massage with Rhonda Henry while supporting the Land Trust's work to preserve and steward the diverse natural environment of Bainbridge Island for the benefit of all. Enter today!

To participate in the raffle, click here to Donate Now!

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The Columbia Gorge Wildflower Weekend’s HoneyMoon Cabin…a true love story, by George Rohrbacher

I have been thinking for some time that I needed to do something really extra special for this coming Valentine’s Day for my Annie. We met at the Univ. of Denver on a Wednesday, mid-October in 1969. I walked her to class and wrote her a poem the next day, on Thursday. On Friday, we flew home to Seattle to meet her parents, and on Saturday, Annie took me to her heart’s home, Bainbridge Island. A week later, I asked her to marry me. We were married on Restoration Point in June, it will be 40 years ago, this summer. Even though all these intervening years we’ve been farming in eastern Washington, BainbridgeIsland has remained our home on the west side of the mountains. Home for us on the other side, the dryside, is the Breaks Ranch, a working 1500-acre cattle ranch in Klickitat County, where the timber and the grasslands meet, on the Breaks of the Klickitat River, a peninsula surrounded on three sides by 1,000-foot-deep canyons.

Four months ago, this past Labor Day weekend, Annie and I put on a camping wedding for our daughter Laura and about a hundred guests. One of the many improvements to the Breaks Ranch that this gala required was working on the HoneyMoon Cabin where daughter Laura wanted to spend her wedding night and the first days of her honeymoon. Set on the edge of the timber, the cabin looks out to the setting sun over a mile-and-a-half long field to the KlickitatRiverCanyon, and Mt.Adams and Mt.Hood, on the horizon. The one-room HoneyMoon Cabin is totally off the grid, one-half mile off the county road, three-quarters of a mile from the ranch house, and three miles from our nearest neighbor. Secluded, in other words. No electricity or running water. Indoor plumbing only where it counts. Think of this experience as camping in a cabin. Total and complete privacy. Awesome sunset deck. Quiet. Darkness. Wildlife. Starlight and Eastern Washington Sunshine (usually).

The recent wonderful experience of daughter Laura’s camping wedding and our guest’s reactions to our 1500 acres of “hiking heaven” were the seeds of the idea for this gift to the Bainbridge Island Land Trust. By creating a silent Internet auction/raffle for Columbia Gorge Wildflower Weekends, we hope to raise funds for BILT, and share our special place on this planet with friends, the kind of gift that will keep on giving. For the lucky BILT members who win the auction and raffle, the dates available to book weekends in the HoneyMoon Cabin during the Columbia River Gorge 2010 wildflower season are between April 24-June 1 (mid-week or extra campers, OK, too).

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For more information about the environs surrounding (and visible from) the HoneyMoon Cabin, check out these links to:

Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area

Columbia River Gorge Visitors Association