Many Rivers.......

Linda Lebow (sp?) a friend of Bridget and Dave's, took us on a tour of Lodi, and to a fun street fair:  music, great fruit and veggies and later Mexican food.  Robert and I biked and played at tennis in the cool of the mornings there.  Lodi is a great town, remembered in a great song.

LA to Linda's to Lodi  to get our mail to Brookings to Bend to get our computer charger found areas of beauty that we didn't know about when we used to race down the coast to visit friends and family.  From Brookings to Bend was through Six Rivers Park, from fog to heat , from grey to teal green pools in the rivers as well as white rapids.  We wanted to jump in, but Margie and the Deschutes River  was waiting .  Cousin Margie is the daughter of my Aunt Dorothy who with Uncle Lewis, walked down the aisle with us when Robert and I got married.  Aunt Dorothy is the sister to my father.  Margie investigated the Hamerquists, McBeans and a few others who are part of who we are - and wrote about it so vividly that I got to know my ancestors, while crying and laughing through it all.  What a gift to find parts of the past that had been missing.  From Bend to Yakima, over the Columbia and along the Yakima River was another gift of beauty - green against the gold of the hills around Yakima.  And being with Marilyn, and the memories we share about Hawaii.  Yakima is truly a garden area with fruit stands just about in every neighborhood, wineries ( 680 wineries in Washington, oh my) and hop fields alongside expaliered apple trees.  Now that is different.

A pool on the Smith River - signs say that there is river access, but those Oregonians have to climb down through all sorts of shrubbery or drive on rocks to get to the swimming holes.  Five miles in from the coast, it is hot enough to attract a lot of people.

The newcomer in Brookings, named Susan, who was fascinated with Koa's tail.  At one point, Koa dragged her across the living room, with the white critter hanging on for dear life.  Koa loves cats and most dogs, but he seemed mostly mortified by the tail drag.

The Smith River - we have a favorite camp site along the river that we stumbled on in the year of family drama:  peaceful, wonderful and out of the fog.  We camp the van in a rock meadow alongside some alders and look across the river to a hill covered in evergreens.  We are a long way from PV.

Cousin Margie and Robert and Koa - Margie walks miles every day and we were puffing in the heat.  The mountains are very close and still covered with snow.  Bend is a very pretty town with the mountain backdrop, but as Margie said, without water, it would be desert.  Pines and firs are all over to cool the town.,