By the time you read this we will be halfway home. As I sit here, thinking, I have absolutely no idea where halfway might be. But, we’ll be heading that way some time this morning.

The mornings here in Baker City have turned frigid and Max doesn’t like that much because he’s so short and his stomach hairs get wet in tall grass. He hasn’t complained openly about that, but it’s evident in he way he looks over his glasses at us that reveals the truth. He also misses all his squirrel friends in his back yard at home.

Yesterday we visited a museum in town that looked promising, and it was. The biggest draw was a gold nugget that weighs about 15 bs, seriously. It’s huge. They have it, and lots of other nuggets on display behind 1 inch glass vaults. The big nugget is valued at around 11-hundred-seventy-five-million $$, a worthy sum for something you could put in your pocket. Surely it would hasten your pants to fall to the floor should you attempt to carry it that way.

There are many more photos of this venture, but I need to get this thing into a current status. Working from behind wears me out, and Diane’s ill so we needed to make plans for heading west to home instead of north to Hell’s Canyon. Yes, we’re calling it quits for this trip.

Diane had an infection that I may have mentioned, and took a bunch of pills to kill bacteria. It cleared up the urinary tract issue, but apparently killed bacteria required to help digest stuff. That resulted in severe abdominal pain. Since she’s the driver on this trip we pooled our thought with the Daron’s and chose to depart this morning with a new destination.

While packing up, Max lounged between the trailer wheels to ensure he wouldn’t be left behind.

This is the dog run area that Max will miss when we’re gone. It’s nine acres of off leash freedom.

The original plan was to turn right on Highway 82 in La Grande and head for Elgin for the night, then move on toward Hell’s Canyon tomorrow morning. Instead, we turned left on Highway 82 in La Grande with a pause in Summerville (population 135) to find Cliff’s Grandpa’s Grave then continued on H-82 to Elgin for the night. Susie found the grave no problem.

The jaunt to Elgin from Summerville took about 15 minutes and it was fairly easy to find the Ha-Wa-Nu RV Park. It’s located on the banks of the Grand Ronde River. That seems odd to me because the Grand Ronde tribe owns the Spirit Mountain Casino. We pass it on our way to the beach once in a while. It’s odd because we’ve been traveling around in Oregon for many days now and all the cars have Oregon plates and we recognize names of places we’ve been before. Normally, when we travel, it involves many states instead of just one.

The end of this trip was the Umatilla RV Park on the Columbia River. It’s very pleasant here and ALL of the grass is green. Max loves it, as do we. After dinner with the Daron’s, we rested well in preparation for our next leg to The Dalles. Dusty is looking forward to that.

Today we did pretty much nothing. That’s right, nothing. Well, nothing other than eat every once in a while, walk Max, try to make the Dish system work, visit with neighbors, and walk Max. Eating was sporadic, walking Max three times was mandatory (he insists), and visiting with neighbors just happens.

Then, there was all the gunfire going on up and down Coronado Beach for 5 hours, 4-9 pm. Everyone knows it’s the Navy Seal training, so I just look at it as the sound of freedom. The weapons being used were semi-automatic but I’m not sure of caliber. I’ll ask my new friend, Ray, a retired Gunners Mate Chief from Arkansas, who just happens to be driving an almost exact replica of our RV. Yes, he and his wife and 3 dogs also has a Holiday Rambler Neptune XL, but his is a 2008. He and I had a nice visit and will we’ll be getting together again. Fun guy. Much younger, be he’s a fellow chief so we understand each other.

The last walk of the day for Max was just as it was getting dark. The RV Park is situated on the water side of a housing area where houses are no doubt very expensive even though most of them do not have a water view. At the end of the park the asphalt turns to and brush, a good place to walk a dog. There’s a path through the brush that goes toward the homes and circles back around to the park, but going that direction, at that time, had us walking directly toward the gunfire. We couldn’t see what was going on because of housing and sand dunes, but we could definitely hear them. Max didn’t want to have anything to do with going that direction and made it clear he wanted to walk aways from the noise. I let him choose the direction and he led me right back to the RV which was about 1/2 a mile away. That tells me a little about what he may have been subjected to while running the streets in California before we got him. He was not a happy camper out there.

Back at the RV we watched a documentary on 9/11 that showed us a great deal about what happened before, during, and after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. Both Diane and I remember that day vividly, as I’m sure most of you do also.

Today was much cooler than yesterday. The next few days are supposed to cool even further. It’s nice to not having your clothes stick to you all the time and to have the A/C units running nonstop to cool things down. It was nice on our ears. We don’t know how long the cooling spell will last, but it’s OK. Today was beautiful and comfortable. We’ll take it that way any day.

Seems like there was something else I wanted to share but all I can think of is that Diane pointed out that I misspelled “presidential” on my last entry so once this is done, I’ll correct that.

Be safe.