Have you ever noticed how sometimes you never thought about something, but instead took it for granted? Kind of like you never noticed how many red cars were around until you bought one. When we got to our family reunion in Redmond, Oregon it was our first time in about 6 months to stay somewhere other than the RV. We had parked the RV and let our son stay in it with our RV security, Blue dog of course, while us and some of our siblings stayed in a resort unit. The first thing we both noticed is how much wasted space there was in tat 2 bedroom condo.
I tried enjoying a bath, but it was a badly designed tub because of where the overflow was put. I couldn’t even get myself fully submerged. So I was off to find a hot tub. The rest of the country had pretty much come out of their COVID lock downs, but not Oregon and Washington. It is now mid may 2021 and still much of the state is unopened. So I had to wait for an open reservation spot and then promptly had to reserve pool time for the week we were there.
It was great to see my siblings, Aunties, Uncles, cousins, and nephews again. Our son and his girlfriend were also able to join us as well and we always enjoy time with them. In the past we always have at least one night game and have played capture the flag, or water balloon fights, sumo wrestled with the aunties, had family feud nights, Wii championships, gone hiking, gone whitewater rafting, gone to the observatories, discovered natural rock water slides, floated the deschutes river, hung out at renaissance festivals, played lots of boccee and Frisbee golf, and generally spent the whole week relaxing and laughing.
This year’s was no different as we decided this year since we had light up boccee sets to play that for the night game. The only problem was that only 2 sets stayed lit. So it was more of a game of chance rather than strategy as you really couldn’t see anything and we were dodging sprinklers that kept going off in different zones across the fields. But like usual it was a total blast.
We also went on a hike that we had gone on in the past to Tumalo Falls. After 3 visits and finally finding the falls, we were excited to finally show some of the others. Keep in mind though that we are usually in this area 1-2 months later in the year like June or July. So we had no idea that they had multiple gates we had driven through to be able to drive to the base of the falls then it was just a short walk to the top. Who pays attention to counting gates when you’re exploring a new area, clearly I don’t. We knew it looked different because the parking lot looked different, but it had been 2 years so we thought maybe they had changed a few things. But after walking more than half a mile, we knew some thing was not right. So we got off the trail and went down to the river. Sure enough you could look up the river and see the bridge I was telling everyone about, so that meant we had to be close. So 2.5 miles later my siblings are cussing me out. Yup we finally saw the bridge, we just had no idea they had built the road up and around and away from the river to come back to the river. Needless to say, they’ll probably never forgive me, but how was I to know they just had snow there last week. I was in Colorado. Well they’ve got 2 more years to forget, even if they don’t forgive 😉
After a long, busy week, filled with way too much food and fun, it was time to cross over into Washington State once again. Homeward bound, we’re homeward bound, almost, we have to stop at the folks places first, then we can be homeward bound!!!
Walla Walla, Washington here we come!
