It's Like Coming Home

We're in Ashland, Oregon tonight. We lived in this part of southern Oregon (mostly Medford) just after we got married and for the next 10 years, longer than we've lived anywhere else together. As we've driven around, it seemed not that much has changed. A few things, here and there, but not that much, really, since we moved away 6 years ago.

At the start of our travels this morning, Mary wanted something different for breakfast, so we went to Safeway, and she ended up buying some Chinese food and a pastry! Of course, since we often get out of the hotel so late each day, it was almost lunch time when she started eating her "breakfast" in the car. I'm glad she shared. We had also stopped at Costco and bought a turkey croissant sandwich with caesar salad to eat later for lunch.

The drive from Bend was beautiful -- lots of mountains and pine trees. Since it was Sunday, we listened to some General Conference talks and music for part of the way. Then we took a detour to see Crater Lake. Magnificent. Still lots of snow up at the rim, including drifts as high as 12 feet. We had thought that we would just eat our Costco lunch outside, but it was chilly and getting colder as storm clouds were rolling in. Fortunately, we were able to eat in a large room upstairs from the gift shop. Even there, we were looking out the second story window at drifts of snow that came all the way up to the window. We enjoyed the view, strolled around outside to take pictures, and then got rained on.

We called Rebekah along the way, and she told us that some old friends of ours, the Woodard's had invited us over for dinner. That was a nice idea. Unfortunately, we got there much later than we originally said, because of the time spent at Crater Lake. And there was no cell phone coverage to let them know until we nearly got to Medford.

But it was nice to see Rebekah and then to visit with the Woodard's. They served on of my favorite Sunday dinners: waffles! It was so much fun catching up with them, that an hour went by between me saying we should really go and when we actually left.

We look forward to spending the day with Rebekah tomorrow! We let her know that we really did drive all the way out here just to see her. I'm sure glad we could.