We road tripped this weekend for the first time in a long time. There is so much fun to talk about I may mess up the order of things and have to come back and edit this blog.
First off, JP declined to go with us anywhere this weekend, choosing instead to be the man of the house and have the place more or less to him self ( plus a beagle & a maltese). He could reach us by phone anytime on Saturday and his Gran any time on Sunday, however he didn't reach out and call anyone and from the little grins he gave us when we asked about his weekend, I can only assume that my kiddo liked having some freedom and some alone time. The Boo, however, did indeed go for the ride and again from all appearances and the few effusive words of feedback, enjoyed hell outta the whole thing. Before you ask for pictures of the trip, I'll point out again that I am an in the moment kinda a gal and rarely take pics of places and frankly most of the wild life was too darn fast for me to snap a pic of as it went buy. I am going to cheat though, and post some pics I found of the web of the creatures and places I saw (w/ appropriate links for credits).
Redmond, Oregon
Saturday wasn't a huge long trip of any sort. We went shopping for shoes (the 5'10" Boo is now wearing size 11) for school and then decided to head over to Redmond and see what we could see. It was lunch time when we got to town and bite at Mazatlan was called for. Oh my goodness, Chili Colorado was still on the menu! It's been off the menu at the Bend location for nearly a year. Rob and I nearly cried when went to the Bend restaurant for lunch 8 or 9 months ago and discovered it was gone. The Redmond location has it, we had it, and from now on we'll only be frequenting that particular incarnation of Mazatlan. Since Redmond hadn't turned into downtown P-town overnight there really wasn't that much of interest or new to see.
We drove on west out town toward Terrebonne. My grandmother's sister, Donna, lives in Culver and I was pretty certain I could remember where she lives. Sadly, the last time I had seen Auntie Donna was at her daughter's funeral, 2 years ago. I thought about that as we passed through the tiny hamlet of Terrebonne and thought about how easy it is to make excuses for how busy life is and how hard it is to get out to one relatives house or the other. Silly stuff. My Auntie Donna is the only direct connection I have back to the sound and look and feeling of comfort from my Gran. I should cherish it and nuture it.
Terrebonne, Oregon
The hamlet of Terrebonne was having a classic cars drive in kinda fair day. There were a lot of fun old classics and kit cars covering the parking lots of the business district (the grocery store and 4 office mini mall). We saw stilt walkers and bikers and cowboys and quilt makers and car buffs. Pretty nifty little event. Several semi's had pulled over on the soft shoulder and their drivers were making their way through the event, to the consternation of the drivers trying to just barrell through town at 60 miles an hour. Lot of horn honking. You could still hear the live musician though. Yup. Musician. Only one. Playing guitar and harmonica and singing. Talented fellow.
Culver, Oregon
Huge potato and garlic and onion fields, teeny tiny little shack homes in desperate need of some love ($$$) and an oddball housing development sitting up on a hill built by the Ambern (Clyde and his daughters. Adaptive Homes. That's a doozy of a story for another day.) family. Every other house was empty and for sale. Very sad. The properties just look dilapidated and then you'd look at the home where ppl still lived and those houses were well kept and nice but the empties just dragged the neighborhood down.
I remembered that Auntie lived on Iris ln but it took me a few to remember which end! There is really only one nice apartment/duplex townhome development in town that just happens to sit on Iris ln it didn't take me long to find it.
A short, nice visit was had with the Grande Dame and then we jumped back in the car to head home. It was hot as blazes and even with all 4 windows down it was not a comfortable ride home. Yes, the car has a/c but frankly the gas gauge just disappears when I run it and I'm too cheap to do that unless it's 110 outside.
By the time we got home it was cooling off and the sun was behind the house and i thought i'd turn on the sprinkler and let the grass have a little relief from the heat. I took two steps into the yard toward the spigot and a dove sprang up right in front of my nose and then started doing that one wing dragging hop/flap thing that birds do when they're tryng to convince you to come after them instead of their nest. Being somewhat smarter than a dove, i looked down, and there, nestled in the over long grass was a fledgling dove. All big dark eyes and little brown/gray body. Momma dove was still doing her injured bird bit trying to get my attention. I humoured her and walked a wide cirle around her baby and took a few steps toward her so she could feel like she'd faked me out sufficiently.
We had a quiet evening, checked up on email, read the news; Obama's VP pick, stupid human tricks (car crashes), the weather predictions for Sunday, and then the Boo pops out with, "We should really go on a trip tomorrow". Well. Hmm. Where should we go, we pondered. We discussed directions more than places, there is a lot of Oregon that Boo and Rob have never seen. After a bit of haggling and discussion of distances and such we decided on going due south to the Oregon/California border.
Sunday
Up fairly early and out the door by 8. I wanted to leave earlier but the family thought since it was the weekend they deserved to lolligag around. We fueled up at the little Shell station, 46.00 bucks!, for my hyper efficient little scooby that was just insulting. I truly do believe we won't turn to alternative fuels until we are forced to by economic necessity, but dammit, it hurts. Anyway then we were off! The drive up to Lapine was fun, leisurely, and we just smiled as the traffic zoomed around us. We were Sunday drivers in no particular hurry (at 65 mph) let the busy bee drivers vroom on past.
LaPine, Oregon
Stopped at Rays to get some refreshments for the trip and a cuppa coffee for Rob since he had forgotten to take even a sip of his cuppa at home. Boo looked at me funny when I picked up a single wrapped roll of toilet paper. I told her since we weren't sure of our destination or route, nature may call when there were no facilities about. She made a face and said ewww grosss, I'll hold it, Mom. I laughed. I operate on the theory that if I need something I won't have it-- if I have it, I won't need it. This little theory has served me well over the years and while I can't call it a proven fact, it's these little lessons learned that make living easier.
The drive out of LaPine and onto Hwy 31 was cool and beautiful. Except for the suicidal chipmunks. Golden Mantles & Western Chipmunks galore, playing dodge the tires with my car. I swear to you they stand on the soft shoulder by the road and watch my approach and just before my car gets within a 3 feet of their position they sprint into the road right under my wheels. I was making Rob and Boo nervous because it got to the point where I'd just close my eyes for the 2 or so seconds it took for me to pass the over the strange little sprinters with a death wish. After a while the sun was either high enough, or the impulse for death had abated because they stopped appearing right in front of me.
Fort Rock, Oregon
If you're never been to Christmas Valley or Fort Rock it may be hard to describe. You're in the tree line, up in the pines, douglas, poderosa, lodge pole and then you're back in the desert. Sage brush, rabbit brush and bitter brush with nary a tree in site. We live in the juniper hardwood forest on the east side of Bend. I know it's hard to think of all that juniper and sage brush as a forest but it really is. And nothing makes that more clear than when you get out to the 'Great Basin' of Oregon where a juniper tree is a short, squat, bushy looking tree standing all by itself in a sea of brush and sand.
Fort Rock is this circluar eroded mountain base. All that is left of what was once a huge old butte or smallish volcano is a 350 foot high outer shell of rock in a nearly perfect circle with 1/3 of it missing, like a donut that a giant of prehistory took a single bite out of. You can see it from 15 miles away, rising out of the sand and brush, looking like it must be some man made structure to be standing so alone in the middle of the desert. The closer you get the more that illusion gives way to the reality of this basalt rock feature and the immensity impresses on your brain what a size it had to have been when it began for it to be this enormous now. There is a small community at Fort Rock, called appropriately, Fort Rock. Don't roll yours eyes at me. They didn't name the community at Smith Rocks, Smith Rocks, did they? Nope, it's Terrebonne. So not every community takes the name of it's geologic and topographical features. A lot do. We visited several this weekend, but not all of them.
About a 1/2 mile out from the community is a nifty little community museum. The residents have moved several of the original buildings onto an 2 or 3 acre parcel and put up a little homesteaders museum. The old school house, church, smithy, several homesteaders houses -- we stopped to stretch our legs and get a look at the great pile of rock -- I stepped up on the boardwalk that runs in front of the little office/smithy of the museum and nearly stepped on a lizard. He scattle-tailed it between the boards and out of site before i could even call attention to him.
Inside the smithy all around the tops of the walls were frames filled with obsidian flake arrowheads, spear points, hand axes, awls . . . it was fabulous. There was a gentleman caretaker/volunteer museum guide sitting in an old cane back chair in the corner wearing wranglers, boots and a T-Shirt proclaiming that he had been to Fort Rock Oregon and my wasn't it BIG? He talked about his little hamlet and the history of it and invited us to come back September 12/13/14 for their Harvest Fest. There'll be a lemonade stand run by the Girl Scouts, an Ice Cream Social hosted by the Boy Scouts and a dance and lots of games and a parade. We are going :)
The caretaker extended an invite to take us on a personal tour of the buildings and share stories and it would have been fun but we had to beg off and save it for another day as our goal was still Lakeview.
Silver Lake, Oregon & Summer Lake, Oregon
Both of these worthy little stops in the road are really just mail stops/postal stops without much to speak for them except for the large hay fields, alfalfa fields and fat and sassy cows munching through the fields. They are both across the border officially, out of Klamath County and into Lake County and you are greeted by two lakes in the first 25 miles. Lots of leaning old buildings, an abandoned church or two and a lot of poplar trees to mark where houses/homesteads originally stood. You will nearly always find a homestead, its foundation or its chimney within 10 yards of a poplar tree in eastern Oregon. My own grandparents and great grandparents homes are ringed with them. Some day I'm going to look up the books about our homesteading and pioneer families and see if anyone did a book about the trees and flowers the gals brought out west with them and what they meant to those ladies turning a patch of sand into a garden of love and family and permanence.** I just did a quick google of "poplar tree" and "homestead" and found page after page of phrases like 'and the poplar tree marks the entrance to the homestead' for places as close as Pendleton, Oregon or as far away as Australia. Huh. Whodathunkit?
Paisley, Oregon
In one of Rob's less witty moments he told me paisely looks like mutant spermazoa to him. I haven't owned anything with a paisely print since.
Paisely, Oregon is much more charming and warm a place than the misnomer of 'mutant spermazoa' but I'll have to continue this tale later today --- the phones are getting busy!
** every place name in this blog has a link to it, just click on the name. i'm also going to post a route map on here to show where we went and how we got there, it was such a FUN weekend! **
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