The Getaway

Fall is always busy for us but this one has been particularly relentless. We had previously canceled travel plans due to some economic uncertainties and while those hadn't diminished much, we needed to go away and do something fun as a family. Thus the pictures from our getaway to Crater Lake, OR and Mt. Shasta, CA.

We drove to my parents last Thursday and enjoyed a birthday meal with my dad. We came back to their house and I was getting the kids ready for the night when I noticed I was missing MY suitcase. Which was at the top of our stairs 180 miles away. My mom watched the kids while my dad, Mike, and I went to stores that stay open past 10pm to shop for replacement items for me. I am hard to please and not really coherent at that time of night so we only had minimal success.

Friday, we drove to Crater Lake National Park and enjoyed a picnic lunch there, a walk and beautiful views of the lake. (See Very Light Suitcase.) Then we took a drive through Prospect, Oregon, where my grandparents lived when my dad was born and where my dad hitchhiked with truckers back and forth to work each week as a teen. He lived up there with family friends Monday-Thursday and came home on weekends. Dad took us to Beckie's for the best huckleberry pie in the country. We saw the beautiful Rogue River Gorge and then drove to Mt. Shasta Resort in northern California. Mike learned that while California is okay with letting illegal aliens in all the time, they have a check-point on the border with Oregon to be certain you don't bring in any produce they don't want. Lame use of a nearly-bankrupt state's funds.

I had an amazing Groupon special for Mt. Shasta resort and so our family of five stayed in a lakeside chalet and I had my first facial at the spa. We also visited my cousin's condo in Lake Shastina (where my brother and parents stayed) and saw friends and family there and in Medford where we stayed a third night (Sunday). There we visited a few places important to my childhood (Lithia Park in Ashland, historic Jacksonville, and a drive by the house where my grandparents lived for most of my growing up years.

I missed my Grandpa Bigger a lot, especially when my dad would tell us stories of him skimming 6 feet off a flat-mountain called Table Rock in his little airplane and then diving off the edge to scare my dad (his passenger). I can picture the mischievous grin he would wear when this story was told. I'm grateful I could call and report on the trip to my grandmother. Having her along would have been even better.

It was a nice, but exhausting trip. Ben hasn't been interested in school and I have been playing catch-up all week while trying to get us all over the colds we picked up with the back-and-forth temperatures and road food.