Tag Archives: luxury

A night spent in a real bed!

September 15th – Movie Night

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     Back to work! This morning, after waking up a little later than I had intended, I joined Lou in the backyard to see what our tasks would be. I was not thrilled to find out that we would spend the day redoing yesterday’s work. We would be positioning the stakes about eighteen inches further back toward the house. That means Lou won’t have to buy as much dirt and the steps will sit more naturally in the existing slope.

     Since I woke up late though, the work day was pretty short. It felt like I’d just gotten outside when Valli started making apple pancakes for lunch. We cleaned up the tools around noon so that we could go eat them. They were wonderful!

     Our afternoon was spent at Marie’s house, where we joined in with a weekly game of Blitz (a card game I had never played before) between Marie, Lou Sr., their friend Ed, and Ed’s caretaker. When we weren’t busy playing, I  heard a little bit about Ed’s experiences in the Air Force. He served during WII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. His favorite plane to fly was the F-4 Phantom. After he retired from piloting, he continued in the military as a flight instructor for several years.

     Marie won the first game of Blitz and I won the second, After these games and a snack, Ed and his caretaker returned home. The rest of us talked for another half hour at the table before deciding to go for a walk around the neighborhood. Along the way, I met two dogs that looked like Alaskan Huskies. From the howls and growls that this one made though, it may have been a wolf instead. 

 

     Back at Marie’s house, Louis and I were interested in watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. Since I am interested in Sci-Fi, I’ve heard of both the book and movie quite frequently. It came up in conversation again earlier this week, and I figured it would be fun to finally see it.

     I was wrong. It was not fun. Most of the movie was slow, boring, strange, and confusing. There was one fun part in the middle though. 

     The middle part of the movie focuses on a colony ship that is headed for Jupiter. Most of the colonists aboard the ship are in artificially-induced sleep, but two crew members remain awake to take care of necessary procedures. They are aided by a supercomputer named Hal – the newest and most reliable version of artificial intelligence yet made. In the end, he turns out to be a bit too smart and decides that he (and possibly the universe) would be better off without the humans aboard the ship. So turns against his human masters, kills one of them, sends the other one spiraling off into space, and then turns off the life-support systems on the ship, thus killing the rest of the colonists.

     Other than this interesting interlude, the whole movie was spent on drawn-out scenes of apes jumping up and down, spaceships flying slower than snails creep, and colors strobing across the screen in strange psychadelic patterns.

     We finished the movie and discussed its obscure and confusing plot. Then we drove back to the Mansion and went to bed.

September 14th – More Work!

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     This morning I met Lou’s sister, Marie. We drove over to her house in the Black Forest at 7:30 A.M. to help her with the arrival of a new refrigerator. The fridge situation was rather complicated and didn’t turn out too well. However, after this slight ordeal, we got to enjoy Chile Rellenos and sausage for breakfast.

     I also got to meet Lou and Marie’s father and enjoy a walking tour of Marie’s beautiful gardens. All of the garden landscaping was done by Marie, her father (Lou Sr.) and her brother (Lou Jr.). In addition to being beautiful, this garden also helped protect Marie’s house when a devastating fire swept through the Black Forest and destroyed many of her neighbors’ houses several years ago.

     Long before the fire, homeowners in Marie’s area had been advised not to allow trees to grow close to their houses because of the fire hazard they posed. Because of Marie’s garden, there were no trees close to her house and there was instead a well-watered border of green plants to discourage the flames from reaching her house. 

     By the time we headed back to the Mansion, it was afternoon. Lou, Louis and I got working on the backyard. Today, our task was to survey the land. Lou did all of the brain work and I just tried to follow instructions. We set one stake at the top of the slope and one at the bottom, and we used those to measure the proper distance for each row of steps. At each row, we hammered stakes into the ground and used a surveying scope to make sure we set them at the right depth. Going forward, we will use those stakes to tell us where to place the blocks for our steps and how deep to dig.

     In the middle of this surveying work, I took a break. I had made an appointment to take my car to a Goodyear tire store today. I needed the slow leak on my tire repaired and I wanted to get an oil change as well.

     I took the car in and Valli brought me back to The Mansion. I worked for another two hours, then the shop called me. They said that they were able to fix the tire, but not to change the oil. They thought the plug was cross-threaded and they did not want to risk stripping the threads. Instead, they wanted to change the entire oil pan, which would cost $512.

     That was silly, so I just told them to just forget about the oil change. I will just have to do it myself somewhere along the road.  I picked the car up and was happy to see that the tire was indeed fixed. Thankfully, I won’t have to use my air pump for awhile!

     Back at The Mansion, I helped to finish up the day’s work and put the tools away. We’d put all of the stakes in that we needed, but Lou didn’t seem quite happy with the way they looked. It appeared that he would need to buy a lot of dirt to make the path level, when he had wanted instead to dig back into the hillside and avoid the need for new dirt. As I said though,  I’m not the brains behind this project, so I’ll just wait to see what he decides to do.

     We had a yummy vegetable and chicken casserole for dinner and a mud pie for dessert. The mud pie made me think of home – it was from Trader Joe’s, and my family and I had enjoyed the very same type of pie several times.

     After dinner, it was time for bed, and I was ready for it!

September 13th – Digging In

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     Lou and I woke up around 7:30 A.M. to eat a breakfast of eggs and pork belly before getting back to work. I tried pork belly first about a year and a half ago when I started working at Mendocino Farms (a sandwich shop in Brea). I liked it a lot there, but it was marinated in brown sugar and other spices. I was surprised to find that it tastes great without all the sugar too!

     Our job today was to remove the rest of the sod on the slope. Yesterday, we tried rolling up the sod after we had cut it out, but the rolls were too awkward and heavy to move out of the way. We’d found it worked best to cut rectangles about eighteen inches long and eight inches wide. These were small enough to carry and could be stacked to the side of our work area.

     I fell into a rhythm of cutting borders into the sod with a crescent-shaped spade (fittingly named a sod cutter). Lou came through next and cut the underside of the sod with a trenching shovel which had a long, narrow blade that made it perfect for the task. Since my job didn’t take as long, I came back and carried the newly cut rectangles of sod to our piles nearby.

     While we worked, we talked. Last night Lou told me quite a bit about three summers he spent working at a sugar beet factory in Southern California, and today he told me some more about his experiences and the general workings of these factories.

      There were two separate stages of production in the factory Lou worked at. The first stage took raw beets and turned them into a liquid called “thick juice” by a lengthy process of slicing, baking, and soaking. The second stage purified and crystallized the thick juice so that it was eventually refined down to usable sugar.

     Lou had a different job each summer he worked there. There was always one goal though – to keep the factory running from when the first beet was delivered until the last beet was processed. The two stages of production that I mentioned above could be stopped independently for a short time to perform essential maintenance, but there was always a rush to get things back online. While dealing with these tight schedules, the workers also had to survive the sweltering heat that often topped a hundred-twenty degrees.

     The processing of beets into sugar may not be the most fascinating subject, but I enjoyed learning about it. Like so many other things I’ve seen and heard so far, it helped me appreciate the work that on behind the scenes of the world I see.

     We finished working around 2 P.M., before the afternoon sun started beating down fully. Of course, the mild Colorado sun was nothing compared to the hundred-twenty degree sauna of the sugar beet factory Lou told me about, but I was still glad to avoid it.

     I spent the afternoon writing about my trip and updating my blog. Then we enjoyed dinner, visited, and finished off the day by going to the airport to pick up Lou and Valli’s son, Louis, from the airport.

     We made the half-hour drive to the Colorado Springs Airport around 11:30 P.M. It was a nice size – much smaller than LA International Airport which we fly out of sometimes back home. Louis’s flight was a few minutes early and he had no baggage to pick up, so we got in and out of the airport quickly. We arrived back at the house and went to bed shortly thereafter in preparation for an early morning tomorrow. 

September 12th – Colorado Springs

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     This morning I had the strange and welcome surprise of waking up in a real bed again. When I got over that, I had another pleasant realization. Breakfast would be waiting for me out in the lobby! That got me out of bed with an added bit of excitement for the day. I enjoyed eggs, buscuits and gravy, sausage, a waffle, and a glass of milk. When I finished eating, I made up another waffle to take on the road (shhh, don’t tell anyone!).

     I made full use of my hotel room by writing at the desk until ten minutes before the 11 A.M. checkout time. Before incurring a fine for breaking the deadline, I turned in my key and filled up my large mug with ice and coffee. I walked out to my car and made sure everything was ready for today’s drive. Yesterday I noticed a slow leak in my left front tire, so I made sure to pump air into it before driving both yesterday and today. Thankfully, my dad sent a handy little electric air pump along with me. I brought it along so that I could leave my basketball deflated while crossing the mountains and then reinflate it when I needed it. Now it’s turned out to be very useful for my tires. As always, my dad thought through the “what ifs” and sent me off well prepared.

     I started listening to a new book on my drive. It’s called Assassin’s Fate. This is the last book in a series I’ve enjoyed for several years. Way back in book one, the main character was an illegitimate little prince in a faraway fantasy world of political intrigue, invading armies, and hereditary magic. He was trained to be an assassin and alse developed two kinds of magic – the one that was a birthright of his bloodline and another that was condemned by society. Through the series, he developed into a young man and lived a life full of love, war, pain, and loss. In Assassin’s Fate, he is now an old man, but he is driven into one more adventure by the kidnapping of his daughter. The book follows him to the end of this adventure and ties up the threads of his nine-book saga.

     After listening to this book for awhile, I took a break to call my friend in New Mexico and then listened to the radio for awhile. I was surprised to find that northern Colorado has five country music stations. I thought I’d need to go a little more southeast before hearing so much country.

     Around four in the afternoon, I arrived in Colorado Springs and drove up to “The Mansion.” That’s my name for the home I’ll be staying in for the next week. The friends I’ll be staying with (Lou and Valli) have been friends with my parents for longer than I’ve been around. My dad owned a duplex with them for several years. Right now they’re splitting time between California and Colorado, and eventually, they plan to stay in Colorado. Their son, Louis, is three months older than I am. We sometimes say that we have been friends since before we were born. He is still in California right now, but he’s going to fly out on Wednesday and visit for a few days.

      In my mind, a mansion is a large house that is more than one story tall and has a cool gate on the pathway leading to the front door. This place passes the test. There is also a great view of the Cascade Mountains from the back patio and a workshop/garage in the large backyard. Upstairs, my favorite thing was the enormous kitchen. It has two ovens and plenty of room for multiple people to cook at the same time. Downstairs is a huge sitting room with a sectional couch that can fit at least nine people.

     As my hosts showed me around, we visited and discussed plans for the week. Before arriving, I had let them know that I would be available to help out with any projects they could think of. I found out that they did indeed have something for me to do. Lou showed me a slope in the backyard that leads down to their workshop. It is a somewhat steep slope and was only broken up by a few levels of block steps that weren’t helping out very much. Our job will be to make a real set of steps. We’d have to pull all the cement blocks out, remove the sod, cut into the slope to make steps, put the blocks back, and level the grass in between the steps.

     The job sounded like fun to me. I was all settled in and had nothing else to do, so we decided to start right away. We began by pulling out the blocks. That didn’t take long. As we moved onto cutting and removing sod, I realized that I needed to document this project – at least the beginning and end of it. Here is a picture of the slope with only the cement blocks pulled out.

     When it started to get dark outside, we cleaned up the tools and went inside for dinner. We talked more about the week ahead, and Lou told several stories of the summers between college semesters when he worked in a sugar beet factory. After dinner, there was a relaxing hot tub bath waiting to reward us for the evening of work. And finally, another real bed!

September 11th – A Real Bed To Sleep In

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     I woke up to a colorful Wyoming sunrise – and lazily resented the bright light streaming through the windshield into my face.

     No, I am not a morning person. When I go to bed, I’m excited about the next day. When I wake up, I just want to stay in the comfort of my sleeping bag. Last night, I saw the sun setting in the west and thought, “Oh, I’ll park facing the opposite way, so that I can have a clear view of the sun as it rises in the east.” This morning, I bemoaned the sun’s bothersome presence because it disturbed my sleep.

     But I did get up and went about my morning tasks. Well, first I sat up in my sleeping bag, reached into my dry foods box, and pulled out the last of five plums that I had purchased in West Yellowstone. I stayed there, enjoying the fruit and scolding the warm sun for waking me, then finally got up for real.

     I knew my destination today – Laramie, Wyoming. I would treat myself to a night at a hotel so that I could shower and relax. Before leaving my spot on the canyon rim, I made a reservation at the Laramie Quality Inn. Then, I drove down the dirt road back to the highway and took this picture of the terrifying spire I had driven out to see last night.

     The drive to Laramie went quickly. I listened to my current audiobook, The Life of Greece, which is about exactly what the title says it’s about. It traces the history of Greece through the numerous invasions, rulers, and societal changes that it went through.

     When I arrived in Laramie, I checked into my hotel and settled in. My first order of business was to shower off all the dirt I had accumulated in Wyoming. There was Yellowstone dirt and Grand Teton dirt and even a little bit of dirt that didn’t have a brand name. I made sure to leave it all behind – I didn’t want to be guilty of stealing dirt.

     As I rested in my comfortable bed, all nice and clean, I decided I wanted some pizza. It had been awhile since I’d had anything other than my strange sandwich inventions. So I looked at Yelp reviews to find out if there were any good local pizza shops. There weren’t, so I settled on Dominoes. I ordered online – and what an experience that was! It was like shopping on Amazon. They had stock photos of what my pizza would look like with each ingredient choice, and once I ordered there was a meter that told me what stage my pizza was at. It showed that the order placed was placed and updated when the pizza moved to the next station – prep, bake, quality check, and pickup rack.

     I picked up my pizza and ate most of it. The two that were left over went into my fridge (I’m at a hotel, I have a refrigerator!) for lunch tomorrow. Then I did a little bit of writing and headed to the spa. This time I was the only occupant, so I had both a more peaceful and less interesting soak than I’d had at the West Yellowstone KOA.

     The relaxing water almost put me to sleep, and falling into my bed is just about to put me over the edge. Goodnight!

August 30th – Flowers, Flight and Fun

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     Just as I hoped, today was much calmer than yesterday. I still spent a lot of time out and about, but I took a slower pace.

     I started the day with a peaceful walk through the Kubota Japanese Garden. From what I read, the unique aspect of the garden is that it follows Japanese principles of design while utilizing plants native to the area. I only recognized a handful of the flowers (that is quite normal for me when visiting gardens) and was greatly impressed with the variety of colors on display – in both the flowers and the plants themselves.

     I also enjoyed the bridges and waterfalls that fit in seamlessly with the environment. There were several main paths with side paths branching off, leading to different levels of the waterfalls. I followed the side paths and thankfully managed not to get lost!

     My next stop was the Museum of Flight which is located next to Boeing Airfield, and (as you’ll see) it contains a lot of Boeing Airplanes and historical information. I spent at least five hours exploring. It was huge! I started in the main building which had six enormous rooms full of planes that spanned the history of mechanical flight from its beginning, through both World Wars and up to the Korean War. There was also a section on the Space Race.  I saw the Boeing 1, the first plane William Boeing made (he even flew it himself apparently).

     I learned that mail delivery was essential to the development of airplanes – it provided the economic opportunities that attracted businessmen like Boeing. The use of planes in World War I encouraged further improvements. The airline industry really got started soon after that, as courier planes started carrying passengers along with their packages. The Boeing 80 was one of these planes and had a compartment for mail in addition to a cab that could fit 18 passengers.

     In other rooms, I saw World War I and II aircraft from many nations. My favorite plane was the M-21 Blackbird, which I saw when I came back into the main room. This was a variant on the A-12, which was eventually developed into the famous SR-71 Blackbird, a super-fast, long range reconnaissance plane. The plane on display (the M-21) was modified to carry an unmanned aircraft for further reconnaissance work. Only two of these planes were made. The first one was destroyed in a crash with its drone and this is the only other one of its kind.

     There was another building (with only one room) that was devoted to the Space Shuttle program. I skimmed over that one because it contained mostly videos and information boards, with information that I could read in a book. I walked through that building and found a large outdoor display area which contained another impressive collection of planes, including modern passenger jets and more war planes.

     I didn’t take pictures here because I was almost airplaned-out after touring through the exhibits inside. I did still enjoy looking though. They had a B-17 Flying Fortress – a World War II bomber so famous that even I know about it.

     They also had the first two super-successful modern airliners, which were made in the late 1930’s; the Boeing 247 and DC-3. Apparently, when William Boeing came out with the 247, he would only sell it to United Airlines, so McDonnell Douglass made the DC-3 and sold it freely to all airlines. Because he had a larger market, Douglass outsold Boeing by a wide margin and set Boeing a few steps back in the airline business.

     Of course, Boeing survived and has made thousands of passenger planes since. The museum had many of them, including the 707 (Air Force One), 727, 737, 747, and 787. Think of how much space those five jets alone take up! And they filled only filled about a third of the pavilion!

     Even though I was tired of looking at planes, it was hard to leave. This was an incredible museum and I wanted to go back over what I had skipped. But I called it quits and drove to Gas Works Park, which sits across the bay from Seattle. The equipment at the park was used to make gas out of coal and oil for the first half of the twentieth century. It shut down when Seattle transitioned to using natural gas. about twenty years later, after the city opened the park up to the public.

     Several people told me that there are two great places to view the Seattle skyline. One is up in the Space Needle and the other is at Gas Works Park. The first one is expensive and the second is free, so I picked the second. The view was worth every penny I didn’t pay! I walked around the park, then sat down to write and read a little. Finally, I gave my mind a break and took the opportunity to just enjoy the view.


       For dinner, I met my Uncle and Aunt at a restaurant in the Capitol Hill district of Seattle. Since I don’t know the fancy names for what I ate, I’ll just have to say that I had steak with small sides of salad, pickled blackberries, turnips, and flatbread. When dessert came, I discovered that a new favorite ice cream flavor – cinnamon basil! Yes, it did taste like both cinnamon and basil, and yes, the flavors mixed wonderfully! I doubt that I will find another place serving it, but I enjoyed it there.

     That wraps it up for today and just about wraps it up for Seattle as well! Tomorrow I will leave civilization behind me and drive over to the Olympic Penninsula.

August 29th – Seattle

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     When I thought about leaving on this trip, I found it difficult to imagine myself navigating safely across the USA. I’ve never been good at using maps and directions. They definitely do not come second nature to me – fourth or fifth nature is about where my navigation skills are. I knew I wanted to be places. I just hoped I could deal with moving between places. Then I remembered that Google Maps exists and my problem was solved. Type in the address and follow the directions. It’s that easy.

     Then, when I got to Seattle, I wondered if I could make my way through the crowded and confusing city streets without getting lost.

     Well, there’s an app for that – of course, there is. There are apps which tell you how to arrive at your destination by car, foot, public transit, or Uber. That’s pretty cool. So instead of allowing myself to get lost, I used an app.

     I started out in Edmunds, where my Uncle lives. He drove me to the commuter rail that would take me into downtown Seattle. On the ride to Seattle, I saw the ocean to my right but was rather distracted by the people squishing in on me from all sides. Especially the ones on my left who were reminiscing about their young adult days of picking fruit in Northern California. I did learn that harvesting peaches is a very uncomfortable task because it is impossible not to get covered in peach hair, which is apparently quite itchy.

     When I exited the rail, I didn’t know exactly where to start. I had downloaded the magical app that would lead me safely through Seattle and I had a general idea of where the places I wanted to visit were located, but I didn’t have a route planned. To figure out where I would go first, I flopped out of the tide of humans I had been swimming with and sat on a bench. I plotted a course to the Seattle Center, which is a public gathering place that was built in 1962 for the World’s Fair. It is a center for performances and activities and includes (among other things) the Seattle Pacific Museum and the Space Needle.

     I had a mile and a half to walk from the transit station and I enjoyed seeing the city as I went. When I started on my way it was 8:20 A.M. and the sky was still cloudy, making for a cool morning stroll.

     I arrived at the Pacific Science Center, hoping to sign up for tickets to see the traveling exhibit of Terracotta Warriors (funerary statues of the first Emperor of China’s army). However, I found that the tickets were slightly beyond my price range, so I decided to leave the exhibit for the real tourists who come with overflowing wallets.

     Moving on from the Science Center, I walked the short distance to the Space Needle and sat near the base to find my next stop.

     I decided to go to the Olympic Sculpture Park and then walk along the waterfront. At the Park, I found three pieces of art that interested me. The first is entitled Wake and is modeled after the lines of the ocean – waves, ships, etc. The second is called Wandering Rocks and I won’t pretend to know what it is about. It’s supposed to be symbolic of something. And it looked cool, so I took a picture. The last one is a sculpture of a nine-year-old girl, entitled Echo. It is over 46 feet high. I watched for several minutes as two people worked on the upper surface. Watching one of them stand on what looked to be a very precarious work platform made me realize that 46 feet is really really high off the ground.

     As you can see in the last picture, the Sculpture Park borders on the waterfront. When I left the park, I followed the water and eventually made it to Pike Place Market.

     During my tour thus far, I had seen at least six different Starbucks locations. Now I saw the original one – 1912 Pike Street. It was crazily busy, so I got coffee at a different Starbucks that was only a block away.

     I walked through Pike Place Market and saw lots of people, lots of stuff being sold and lots of food. In addition to the open-air marketplace that it is famous for, there are four levels underneath, inhabited by a wide variety of shops. I approached it from the waterfront and walked up several flights of stairs to get to the top level. From there I explored downward where I eventually found the best kind of store there is – a used bookstore.

     Next, I used the underground transit system to get out to the University of Washington. I haven’t been to a university quite that large before, and I was interested in comparing it to Grand Canyon University, where I plan to attend in the fall. The University of Washington didn’t disappoint – it is huge. It took me about half an hour to walk from the southern edge of campus where the transit station was to the center of campus where the tour departed from. I was impressed with the grand buildings that gave off the feeling I’d always imagined I’d find at places like Harvard and Oxford.

     I finished the campus tour and walked back to the subway. When I got back to downtown Seattle, I visited the Waterfall Garden, which is a tiny patch of lush greenery in the heart of the bustling city. The garden is built on what is said to be the footprint of the original UPS office (then called the American Messenger Company) in 1907.

     My next stop was the Frye Museum. I enjoyed all of the walks I took throughout the day, except for this one. There was a steep, long hill, upon which the sun graciously decided to bestow its warm rays. Just as a piece of advice, if you ever tour Seattle, don’t walk east on James Street. I enjoyed the art at the Frye but was not able to take pictures there.

     I finished up at Seattle Public Library. Because of the shape of the building, I couldn’t get a good picture that would communicate the size and awesomeness of the place. It is an eleven story tall library filled with books, media of all sorts, people, comfy seats, meeting rooms, and at least one coffee shop. I looked around for a few minutes, then went up to the eleventh floor and sat down to rest.

     After recovering, I walked to the commuter rail and rode back to Edmonds, where Uncle Ross picked me up. We ate a delectable dinner at home of barbequed pork, fresh salad, corn, and sourdough bread. For dessert, we had fruit, including plums that I was given in Oregon and blueberries from Aunt Dianne’s garden.

     Now that the day is over, it seems to have gone so fast! It went by in a blur of busy people, impatient cars, incredible skyscrapers, and churning feet. Two of those feet were my own. They churned a lot – twelve miles in all. I am thankful for everything I got to see and also for the way I experienced the city. By walking all around, I saw both the good and the bad (thankfully not the dangerous though). Taking public transportation was interesting too, as it gave me a chance to catch a glimpse of the middle-class culture in the city.

     Even in the hugeness of a metropolis like Seattle, people build relationships. On both of my rides on the commuter rail, I listened to people greet each other as friends. From what I heard, think it would be true to say that they primarily see each other on the way to and from work. But that is enough time to talk for a moment and appreciate the presence of a familiar, friendly face. Even the security officers who came back to check on the passengers was able to greet many of them by name. On my trip back to Edmonds, the security officer stuck around for the whole ride. He and the eight people he talked to were making plans to have a barbeque together on the weekend.

     Well, there’s enough for one day! Tomorrow should be a little bit more relaxed. I hope.

August 26th – Sweet Home

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     When the inevitable and terrible separation comes (whereby one must get out of bed and face the day), it is a comfort to be greeted by yummy food. This morning I woke up to fresh eggs, bacon and potatoes, and some biscuits that I brought with me.

     After we finished the meal and the dishes, Marshall showed me the pig pen he made. He’d just gotten these pigs and found out right away that they are master escape artists when they dug underneath it. He decided they needed a little shock to remind them who was in charge, so he built an electric fence. They appear to have learned their lesson since they are doing a wonderful job of staying inside and looking cute.

     Our first adventure of the day was a drive into Willamette National Forest, which is about twenty miles from Sweet Home, in central Oregon. We hiked up Iron Mountain which is one of the smaller mountains in the range. At the top, our view was limited by the smoke from a nearby fire but the features of the mountain were still impressive. A squirrel came by to say hello.

     In the late afternoon, we went adventuring again, this time in the water – kayaking down McDowell Creek. We took two cars and dropped one off a couple miles downstream so that we wouldn’t have to kayak back upstream. Then we took the other car to where the kayaks were stored. The trip downstream was beautiful and fun, although I earned myself a tenderfoot badge by getting stuck for several minutes in one section of rapids. I learned that kayaks float much better on water than they do on rocks.

     We capped off our kayaking trip by dunking ourselves in the water. I still don’t understand the reasoning that went into that decision. We kayaked all the way downstream, succeeding in remaining dry and not falling into the water… then we fell into the water on purpose. Oh well, that’s how it worked out. It was refreshing – in an ice-cold, breath-stealing sort of way.

     We had a peaceful end to our day, first going to the men’s prayer meeting and visiting there,  then eating a wonderful dinner at home and preparing for Sunday.

August 22nd – San Luis Obispo

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    Today is a hard day to write about. A lot happened, but most of the happenings were conversations. I woke up a little before 8 A.M. and had breakfast with my Aunt and Uncle. We continued talking all through the morning until we had a wonderful lunch of salmon salad and toast. During my stay, I enjoyed several kinds of fresh produce from my Aunt’s garden. I had cucumber, plum, heirloom tomato, and steamed zucchini. I was also given a bag full of plums for the road.

    Eventually, it was time to leave. I drove the short distance to San Luis Obispo and met my friend at his house. He had arranged previously with one of his friends for a place I could stay. After we talked at his house for awhile, he took me to where I would stay for the night. The owners of the house only use a small part of it, so they rent out several rooms using Airbnb.

  My room was wonderful and the whole house and residential development were beautiful. My friend and I continued talking while we had dinner on the veranda. I mentioned several of the destinations I have planned and he told me that he has a friend who lives in the northern suburbs of Chicago, so now I will have someone to visit while I’m there! We continued talking and I played a few songs on my guitar. A little before 9 P.M. he returned to his house to allow me a peaceful night of sleep.

    Before going to sleep, I enjoyed the chance to relax and think. So far I’ve spent a lot of time visiting with people, so there are a lot of thoughts swimming around in the pond of my brain. Conversations are hard to turn into writing. I may come back and edit these entries, to add in the things I talked about. It will take time for me to process them though. In the meantime, I will keep moving forward on my journey. I’ve had a lot of fun so far and I’m excited about what is to come!

August 21st – The Beginning

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    After the excitement of my experimental run on August 7th, it felt strange to have everything go according to plan today. There were no detours, no engine breakdowns and nothing in the least bit unexpected.

    I woke up at 7:30 AM and ate breakfast with my family before making sure that everything was packed up. On Thursday evening, I had started packing the Ford Expedition I would be driving. At the end of the night, I figured that I was almost done packing and would have plenty of extra space. Then Friday and Saturday happened. And Sunday. Each day I found a dozen or more little things I had forgotten to pack. Today was no exception, so I squished in the last minute additions and saw that I no longer had an empty car. So much for packing light.

    Finally, I was ready to go. But my younger brother, Sam, wasn’t quite done with me yet – there was just one more thing to do. It involved swords, plastic shields, and helmets. Sam and I equipped ourselves with the aforementioned items and met in the backyard to fight a farewell duel. Our battle raged long and fierce (translation, we fought for five minutes, being very careful not to hurt each other or chip our swords), leaving both of us sorely wounded and ready to make peace. So make peace we did, and I ran off to get myself cleaned up before I left.

    Now it was time to say goodbye. My family and I sat together in our schoolroom and they prayed for me, then they walked me to my car and wished me farewell as I drove away. Before I could get too lonely and start overthinking the fact that I would be gone for an eternity, I took out my audiobook and began listening. I am still working my way through Our Oriental Heritage, by Will Durant. During my long and uneventful drive, I learned quite a lot about India’s history, religions, and social structure.

    I made one stop along the way – to stretch my legs, call home and update my parents on my progress. Then, I got back on the road and arrived at my Aunt’s house, just south of San Luis Obispo. I spent a wonderful afternoon and evening there. We ate lunch, visited, went for a two-mile walk (along the way we saw a really cool mailbox), visited some more, watched President Trump’s speech, ate dinner and sang a few hymns while I played the guitar.

    And that was my day. Like I said, a peaceful beginning. I hope to enjoy some more adventures in the future. Hopefully, some will be a little more exciting. But not too exciting.