Well I write this from the Beaverton Public Library which is a suburb of Portland Oregon. My Jeep broke down two hours from my home in a place called Woodburn. We spent the night at my daughter Jessie's place in Tualatin another suburb of Portland. After taking nearly two hours to find some place that is only 20 minutes away, we finally arrived at a radiator shop. We had problems with the radiator before we left on our trip but it was fixed, (supposedly) and we were assured all would be great for the trip. Well I'm sitting at the library because I have a few hours to kill before I have a brand new radiator installed. Then Emily and I will once again hit the road.
We are using a trailer that Emily and her dad put together for us. It's 5x10 with 4 ft high walls. It's a very heavy load and besides the radiator yesterday we are also dealing with one side coming apart. We have fixed that by wrapping those cinch straps around the entire thing and naturally it's been raining showers in between sunshine. But it's been a beautiful trip so far anyway. When we left the coast, immediately we were greeted by a big beautiful blue sky with puffy white clouds. The chill was gone, the wet dampness was gone, and when we exited the Van Duzier corridor we saw the world open up. Gone were the confines of the tall trees everywhere. I was so ecstatic to see wide open fields again, golden fields and even hay bales. I love hay bales. We drove in the slowly rolling hills of the valley, and once again the wonderful smell of cows permeated the air, I'm not speaking about fertilizer here by the way. But then we neared Salem which is the first city we come to outside of the coast and we were met with tons of traffic, I have not missed traffic, no, not one iota.
We stayed at Jessie's home last night and that was fun too as I have not seen her home since she moved. It was just us three girls this morning as Ray had gone off to work, and well you would have thought we were at a slumber party. So when I say this trip so far is going good it is.
I do want to mention that thanks to my ex-husband, the girls' dad we are able to continue and I don't have to stay here to get a job and pay for the radiator, I will be able to pay him back once we get on our feet up there.
So as you see I am taking Anna's advice and blogging about everything. I just thought I'd get an early start. I shall be back asap.