Well its once again the Fourth of July. And as usual it's very hard to understand why life moves so fast. We spent the last couple of weeks doing a great deal of driving, having some fun, and dealing with some "issues" in our personal and work life.
We had planned a getaway to go ride in Millican Oregon with our friends and family. We have talked about this several times but haven't managed to make it work until this year.
Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond their control some unfortunate things happened to our friends and they were unable to make it. We elected to continue on and abbreviate the trip with our parents and hand-off Morgan for his week long Idaho visit. It usually works like a prisoner exchange on a bridge in eastern Germany... minus the Uzis, leather trench coats, and well Germany.
Millican was warm and dusty - very dusty. I rode up front most of the time and couldn't figure out what everyone was griping about. It looked great too me! We had a good time and discovered some sections of the area that we would like to visit again as well as better camping spots. We will try to plan another trip with our friends in the future when they are able to come. Having an idea about the area helps tremendously. Although I'm worried about more dust in the fall.
Once the prisoner exchange happened, we made the long trek back home to the Coast and back to the grind. We planned on doing several things last week, but didn't get many of them accomplished. Both Bridgett and I managed to come down with a cold of some sort (had to give up on the "allergy" theory after a couple of days). Bridge made the long trip to Seaside to pick up the Great Dane pup mentioned in the previous post. Crixus is very pretty and extremely mellow. I was quite surprised by how mellow he was - even for a Great Dane, a breed known for its mellowness.
Work was overloaded and I had to "correct" an employee this last week and will end up covering several days and weekends of call this month and probably next month as well. No Oregon Country Fair for us this year unless I'm really lucky getting extra help.
Friday we left for a long drive to Idaho for the second half of the prisoner exchange. We decided to do some Geocaching along the way and drove through Redmond, Prineville, and John Day instead of Bend and Burns. We picked up several Caches along the way. Crixus did very well in the car (slept most of time).
However we were thick headed and "thought" we would just pop into a hotel on the 2nd of July in John Day. Hey its not like its a "destination" resort area after all. Well.... there was a biker poker run going on and all the Inns were full!! We ended up in Ontario around 3:30am....
Our trip was short, but we managed to see some friends and their new toy. A Can-Am Spyder. This is like a trike motorcycle with the two weeks in the front. I liked it and I've been teasing Bridgett that at 38 years old - its about time for a mid-life crisis!
We also spent some time with my 93 year old grandmother who is now living in an assisted living center. We've been concerned about her health for some time and wanted to see her this summer before anything bad happens. The center where she is living is quite nice and she looked remarkably well.
Of course we had fireworks - Dad lives just on the verge of the city limits, so we had quite a time with the "not-so-legal" skyrockets and firecrackers that he had sitting around as well as a couple of mortars. We drove back yesterday and picked up a few more geocaches. The trip was longer - both "children" were a bit of a pain in the neck - but they did ok.
Now its back to work......
