Home again, home again.

July 31, 2003

I can’t begin to tell you how much nicer the weather is here than it is in Bend. Well, let me rephrase that, because the weather in Bend was . It is so much COOLER here than it is on Bend. On Tuesday, our last day there, we went hiking at Smith Rock State Park, a nice place outaside Redmond, OR, that caters to all sorts of outdoor types, including climbing on some pretty spectacular rock formations. Yes, I took lots of pictures, but when you’ll get to see them is another matter….

From the parking lot, we tried to follow the map but ended up along the edge of the canyon with no way down, so we had to backtrack to get down to the footbridge at the bottom of the cayon that led to all the trails. We went hiking in one direction, and got about a mile or so before the path started taking an altitude that we couldn’t. We were taking water breaks every five or ten minutes, and with no end in sight to the climb, we decided to turn around and go the other direction, backtracking again. Heather had been stopping a lot to look at birds, though, so we had gotten plenty of rest, but the heat was taking a lot out of us. We started going the other direction towards a place I had seen from the top of the canyon, but I was beat. It was past 1 PM by this point, over 100 degrees F, and we were both pretty sweaty. At least I was. I was covered in sweat (and sunscreen), and it was enough that it didn’t just get picked up by your clothing, but it stayed and covered my body with a salt when it left. I HATE feeling like that.

So we spent a few hours out in the sun and heat, hiking around, but it was worth it. I wanted to spend more time there, but the combination of backtracking twice, the heat, and the time of day it was (time to leave) were against us. It was fun while it lasted, though.

So we took off from there. We stopped in Madras about 20 miles down the highway to get some gas and lunch, though. As we pulled into the Shell station in Madras, I kept looking around because it looked so familiar. I finally realized that my Dad and I had pulled in there–the exact same pump and position, no less–as we came back from the last leg of our journey two months before. I even remembered what I got in the mini-mart and where the bathrooms were. Of all the gas stations around….

So now we’re over at my Dad’s house, just bumming around. We’ve had a lot of days of doing things, and so it’s nice to just relax in the air conditioning and watch movies and TV. We may go to a baseball game tonight, but I’m starting to lean away from that idea because it costs so much, and I’ve spent so much money in the last week already. I mean, the tickets are only $10/apiece, but the food is so pricey that I end up spending like $40 on an evening of food at the ballpark. I guess we’ll just have to see.

And that’s about all for now. I’m not exactly sure what we’re going to do now, but I’m certain that there will be lounging involved. It’s supposed to be cooler today, so maybe we can spend some more time outside just hanging out on the deck over here. I bought a 12-pack of a brewery sample of Widmer Brewing Company beer, a good sample for Heather of Portland beers. We sat outside before dinner last night and had a couple, just sitting in the evening sun and listening to music on the radio. Actually kind of reminded me of being back at school, of I weren’t sitting on a deck in the backyard of my Dad’s house. Have a good day, all, and I hope you can last through one more day of inconsistent updates. Later.

Posted in Beer, General