dad called us a couple of months ago and told us he'd made our plans for the 4th of july this year.
where?
condon, oregon.
where?
it's not by the ocean.
it's not in the mountains.
there aren't any cool pine forests.
it's in the middle of nowhere but it does have one heckuva 4th of july celebration.
the 2 hour drive from kennewick was all hills, wheat fields and wind mills.
with every passing mile i felt myself melting into the seats of my dad's red truck as we listened to garth brooks sing about rodeo cowboys and counted cars on passing trains. the further we drove the happier i felt as i embraced the love surrounding me from the 5 people that mean the most to me in the world: my husband, my sons, my mom and my dad.
i didn't even pack extra clothes because i forgot to care about wearing the same shirt and jeans 2 days in a row. my cell phone lost service so there was no way to receive texts, check facebook or blog.
my only objectives for this little trip were to slow down, relax and enjoy the happenings right in front of me. so i did.
happenings:
-a stay at hotel condon with its ancient door knobs and cool creaky floors
-chili on a baked potato
-little boys racing to gather candy thrown from the parade
-2 old mark twain books found at an old book sale
-fields full of green grass, red weeds and purple lupin flowers
-a 4lb plate of street stand bbq
-a 5 mile race across rolling hills lined by yellow velvet wheat fields
-climbing a hill with hammers and chisels to pick at the layers of fossil riddled rocks
AND
-the dozens of old barns sprinkling the 20 mile drive between condon and fossil oregon.
my dad would drive me in as close as he could get to the old structures and the rest was up to me. i'd climb through barbed wire, wade through weed covered hills in flip flops, scare off grazing deer, keep my eye on the circling and screeching hawks and scale large mounds of piled gravel to get the best angle possible of these incredible barns. the harder it was to get to, the more i wanted it.
it was such a fun trip.i hope we can do it again next year- but with aaron, laurel, carl, dave and their families too.
4 comments:
L.O.V.E. I love those barn pics. My dad wants us to do that on the drive from AZ to UT but it would be a REALLY Long drive. Love your eye
I'd like to commandeer that little white number, Notebook its guts out, and have the whole lot of you crash there next fourth of July. Sounds like a plan above all plans if you ask me.
i love every detail of that comment jess.
everything is vacant.
and clean inside.
just begging to be "notebooked".
our fam needs to adopt your fam.
The Condon 4th of July parade had nothing remarkable--some bagpipes, local pols, and dirt bike club, but I focused on my daughter in her lawn chair decompressing. So what if the Condon dance class had only two marchers and OSU marchers handed out orange soda? Great to see that you can enjoy life just for life's sake and eat a 4 lb plate of pulled pork and potato salad. Come often, young one. And bring those two scalawags!
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