Road Trip! And Mom's Birthday party
This past week has been a wonderful week of driving down to Suncity West to see Mom!
I started out last Saturday on a drive down to see my mom. It's been a wonderful drive so far with no inclement weather at all, no problems with the Van (Knock on wood) and the chance to meet some nice folks along the way.
First stop was West Linn, Oregon to spend the night in my Buddy Dan's driveway - and then it was off towards the Steen mountains via Bend, where I stopped to check out our neighbor Ben and Natalie's ADU that they are adding to their house there. Then I stopped in at the last Blockbuster on the planet and checked it out before continuing. Along the way, I decided to stop at the Crane Hot Springs for the evening, which was just wonderful.
The next day was spent heading towards the Steen mountains with a Hike up the Pike Creek trail. The hike was over 6 miles and 1,300 feet of elevation gain, and I did it pretty comfortably. On my way out of Oregon, I stopped at the Alvord Desert and drove on the dry lake bed, which was pretty cool. From here, towards my Thursday night stop was mostly highways, byways, and backcountry roads with a night spent next to a reservoir before heading up to the ghost town of Hamilton and the Bellmont Mills.
On Thursday, I checked out Cathedral Gorge before stopping for the night outside of Logandale Trails. Friday morning, I spent about four hours on the trail. I was trying to do the 13-mile loop, but I ran into an obstacle about 9 miles in that I just couldn't get over because of the length of my van, so I had to turn around and backtrack the 9 miles I had come in on.
Friday night, I bombed over to my nephew Jack's place and hung out with him, Jay, and Jay's mom, Jana (as well as the collection of four border collies and Penny)
Saturday morning, we hung out some more before I headed down to Suncity West to meet up with Sue and Mom. Mom was coming in from a week-long cruise with her friend Mary Lou. On Sunday, we celebrated Mom's 80th Birthday with a party that Sue put together for her and her friends. Sue really outdid herself putting this party together, and everyone had a nice time.
Mom has been scanning all her old photo albums and organizing them in Photos on her Mac. Well, turns out her Mac is an old Intel Mac from 2018, and was really struggling. So we headed to the Apple store on Monday to get her a new, modern iMac that can keep up with the demands of working with her photo collection. I spent the rest of the day getting that all set up for her, and getting her phone and iPad in sync as well, and now everything is working much better.
Sue and I also introduced Mom to Ted Lasso; she hadn't seen it yet, so we managed to get through the first season without too much trouble.
Tonight, my Niece Sophie and her boyfriend Danny are coming over, and we are going to have spaghetti and play games. Tomorrow, I will head out towards my cousin Eric's place in Petaluma before meeting my race team on Friday for a weekend of racing.
If you'd like to see more pictures and details from my trip, you can check out my daily travel log posts on my blog.
Dan Weatbrook
