Wallawa Lake road trip with Bryce

Dear Family,

Last weekend, Bryce and I left after Sacrament Meeting (and after making lunch, and after changing a spark plug in my car and after deciding not to take it and after repacking bryce's car and after stopping in on my monthly home teaching visit to Foushee's who fed us a little lunch and dessert and good gospel discussion - this is how Pixton's leave town) and began our road trip. We drove in Bryce's car in 100 degree weather with no air conditioning and a whistling windshield trim toward Wallawa Lake in the northeastern corner of Oregon. In the extreme heat, we found it advisable to stop for refreshment and sustenance at the last Burgerville for 24,789 miles, as the billboard said, and humbly partake of a large raspberry shake, some fries and a hamburger. Heading into the mountains, it is always good to stock up on things you may need in reserve, such as a bajillion calories in a quite heavenly concoction. Having had my spiritual experience for the Sabbath, I was ready to proceed on the journey across the high desert of Oregon and into the Wallawa Mountains.

Heading up the grade into the Blue Mountains, we drove into a lightning storm and rain pounded on the windshield. This storm was unexpected and it was beautiful and cool. At dusk, we were lucky to find a campsite along the Minam river in the dark. I sat at our picnic table in the dark and wrote in my journal on my laptop - the remote location, the rush of the river closeby and the starry sky above was quite a contrast to my high-tech screen, the only light in our camp. We slept in the open air and it was good rest.

Monday morning we drove to the Wallawa valley, and ate breakfast in Enterprise. I found that the proprietor and cook of our restaurant was a former client of mine from Lake Oswego. After our excellent meal, I had a good chat with Steve Lear while he worked the grill in the kitchen. He gave up his business and Lake Oswego home and moved to Enterprise to run a restaurant. He's on the city council and is a civic leader there. What a change of life. Would you have the courage to do this?

Next we went up the hill to check out the airport. We found the LDS church right next to the runway and at the runway we found a friend of my brother Bobby, Hank and his wife Kim with their Husky. They were visiting his sister in Wallawa. Small world.

We drove through Joseph, a very artsy community with beautiful bronze sculptures on each corner, to Wallawa Lake - very picturesque. We took the tram up to the peak of Mt. Howard. This was the highlight of the trip so far. Very incredible view, somewhat scary ride, tame animals at the top that ate from our fingers, chipmunks, squirrels, deer, birds, etc. We overlooked a canyon and the Eagle Cap Wilderness in the distance. Spectacular. Down in the canyon again, I filled my water bottle from the crystal clear water cascading down from the snow caps. I don't remember seeing water so clear before. It was cold and delicious.

After Wallawa Lake we drove further east and south to an overlook on the ridge of Hells Canyon - formed by the Snake River on the border between Oregon and Idaho. Beautiful wildflowers. We camped in a canyon descending to the Snake River. The next morning we drove to Halfway (it's not half way, it's all the way!) where we stopped for breakfast. The waitress cut Bryce off in the middle of his order with her hand in his face. Snarl. When she finally brought my breakfast, she slammed it down on the table in front of me and snarled at someone else at the next table. Bryce ordered orange juice. She grabbed it out of a cooler, shook it twice and plopped it down in front of him, still in the plastic bottle. We laughed and felt we had gotten our money's worth in entertainment alone.

We drove home on 84, foregoing our earlier plan to drive through the Blue Mountains and home along the John Day river. We'd had enough camping, enough winding roads and enough heat. We stopped by Horse Tail falls and Multnomah Falls and Benson Lake picnic area (checking it out for a ward activity) and came home, glad to be in such a nice place we could call home. We had a good time. In the evening Kaaren and I joined Skye and Jared for the fireworks at Fort Vancouver. Came home pretty tired. I go to work to recuperate, it seems, from the weekends.

So this was a road trip, a journey together to explore a little bit of America. We had some dumb conversations and some good conversations about mountains and valleys and philosophy and the search for quality (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance style), forgiveness, independence and growth, relationships with girls and with cars and other imponderables and we came home richer together.

Dad

Our Weekend

Sunday Evening, July 9 2006

Dear Family,

This last few days have been memorable. On Wednesday we had my sister, Shauna, and her husband Rick Laurel visit us on their way to Victoria, BC. We had a nice dinner here (salmon and more) and they stayed the night. Then the next day, my Mom and John visited us on their way from Chilliwack, BC to Mom's place in Occidental. We had another great dinner here and they stayed the night. Friday afternoon I drove Mom and John up to Timberline Lodge. We enjoyed the views of unlimited landscape on a clear warm day, some white bean chili and ale in the pub and stopped at a burger place near Sandy called "Calamity Jane's". Mom used to be (still is by John) called Calamity Jane and so she got a kick out of it as I knew she would. Saturday John was having balance problems so they stayed the day to recuperate and left this morning for Occidental. It was nice to have them relax at our home for a while. Courtney and the boys came over Saturday and had a picnic on our lawn with them and Mom played frisbee with Logan.

But Kaaren and I weren't here yesterday because we went to the Oregon Country Faire - a traditional fair of creative exuberance in the woods west of Eugene. I've put pictures (the ones I think I can put out publicly at this point anyway) on the flickr site you can reach by the link on our website. Kaaren and I enjoyed ourselves immensely. The sights and sounds were so unusual and exhilarating. It was huge. It would take days to really see all the displays and vendors and bands and jugglers and speakers exhorting return to the earth and respect for nature, etc, and impromptu parades (the whole thing was a parade, I remarked to Kaaren) and small musical groups and people with interesting get-up and garb or no get-up and no garb, and artists wall-to-wall with so many beautiful creations. We came home with a combination toy box/marimba made of red alder and cedar and a beautiful velvet skirt for Kaaren and a multicolored natural small broom (hobbit size) for sweeping out our treehouse.

Kyrstyn's group, March Fourth, was the big hit at the end of the day and there are quite a lot of pictures of them and the crowd around them.

It was an unforgetable day and we look forward to going back next year.

Our gardens are really beautiful and provided roses of many colors and fragrances for the church meetings today. They have also provided roses through the house for a few weeks. But the heat is beginning to take its toll on things.

I'm including a picture of the tree house on the website. I plan to finish the stairs tomorrow evening. Guess which part I designed and which part Kaaren designed?

I heard an interesting quote today. "You make the laws but I'll make the music and move the world."

We had a remarkable sacrament meeting today but I think Kaaren can tell you better about it - she took more notes. Ask her.

love,

Dad