Nearly Packed

Tomorrow is the big day! I’ve done my best Google-Fu and we have maps and directions. We’ll be heading through the North Cascades in WA state and then down to Leavenworth (cute little fake-Bavarian tourist town) and then all the way down to southern Oregon to Crater Lake and the Oregon Caves. After that it’s a short hop through the northwest tip of California and back up our beloved Oregon Coast before heading home. This will be 3 weeks of short hops between campgrounds with lots of hiking and relaxing – weather cooperating. Glad we aren’t leaving today however. It’s been pouring rain all day with no respite. Supposed to be nicer tomorrow. Perfect! Anyhow I’m packed for just about everything: shorts to longjohns, sleeveless t-shirts to raingear. I am not a minimalist. I might be camping but I like at least some creature comforts. Our poor van is going to burst at the seams!

T-Man has been having a great time with his woodturning buddies at the conference. He brought home an expensive tool that just looks like a fancy handle to me but he assures me he can use it to make spindles. I’ll believe it when I see it but I’m hoping it’s true! We both seem to be stocking up craft supplies for his retirement in a couple of years. Or sooner. You never know. Anyway, he says he’s learning lots of good things and I don’t mind delaying our departure for a couple of days. The cleaning and packing a lot of stuff by myself is a bit draining but it’s not like I haven’t done it many times before.

Unfortunately I’m very sad that I have to leave yummy produce in my garden to the kids or the compost, whichever comes first. We can’t take any of it across the US border. There are grapes nearly ripe! But not ripe enough to do anything with yet. I dehydrated a lot of the Juliet tomatoes though and they came out very good so I’ll remember that next time I have too many to deal with. About 1.5 ice-cream buckets worth (maybe 6 litres?) dried down to one small ziploc baggie. Amazing. And easy. And I made fresh pickles with a lot of the cucumbers. We’ve been eating a lot of our own produce since spring so I don’t feel too heartbroken – and there’s always next year.

This damselfly posed for me last weekend in Manning Park. There were lots of these pretty blue ones plus a couple of different varieties of their big cousins the dragonflies.

Even though I’m bringing my little netbook computer with me, chances are we won’t stop anywhere where there is free wi-fi so this is a fond farewell until after October 2!

One more sleep! Yippee!