COUNTRY ROADS TAKE ME HOME

At last we are headed home! Mom is driving me nuts though because she cannot stop singing Country Roads and you outta hear her try and carry a tune! John Denver would have a heart attack. But, it's ok because my mountain mama is taking me home.

First I want to say how much we enjoyed our time in Florence and appreciate the new friends that we made. There was Paulie at the Pacific Pines RV park. If you are RV'ing through Florence, I highly recommend this park. It's like a home away from home for us now. Thank you Paulie!

Then there were Glen & Keith at the Dunham RV Service Center. These two guys were princes to work with and treated my mom really well and did great work. Believe me some of these RV places treat people like last weeks lunch. Thank you guys!

And a great big thanks to Virgie, Bill and Patrick at the Bill Roberts sign shop. They were the ones that did the sign work on Clementine and Shadow and made me look so handsome. Well, really they had a lot to work with! :)

And, last but certainly not least thank you to my friend Buddy. The little runt is a weenie dog and he bit me! Can you imagine? :) And a VERY special thanks to Buddy's mother Marilyn who drove us all over the place. It's that "blowing the coat" time of year and I left an incredible deposit of hair in the back of her SUV. She was extremely gracious about it! You don't know what shedding is until you see a husky blow its coat!

We left Florence a little late in the day and only got as far as The Locks along the Columbia River. We are headed for Spokane where we will wait for good weather and clear roads. Since our ranch is at nearly 4,000 ft. we may not be able to get all the way home. But, I don't care. We are headed in the right direction!

©Kinsey Barnard Photography

Waterfalls and Waterfowl in the Columbia Gorge

Yesterday was a great day! We were out photographing and hiking most of it. Makes my day and makes mom's too!

We started off at Bridal Veil Falls and Bridal Veil Creek and then on down the road to Wahkeena Falls and Wahkeena Creek . Mom muta been off her game because she didn't get shots of either of these falls that she liked.

From Wahkena we went to Multnomah Falls . I couldn't believe how many tourists there were for November. I think everyone on the planet must visit these falls.

From Multnomah we headed east along the Columbia Gorge to the Bridege of the Gods just above the Bonneville Dam. Then we headed west again toward Vancouver. Shortly after crossing the bridge mom scoped a Great Blue Heron wading in a pond. So, naturally, that was a stop.



Mom had been promising me a hike all day so when we came upon the Pacific Crest Trail we stopped for jaunt. Seems like everywhere you hike around here it's beautiful. The rain forest is so plush. Didn't see anything particularly interesting just a nice hike. As you know, anytime I'm hiking, I'm liking!

After our hike we continued down the north side of the gorge and quickly saw some Canada Geese . The geese looked like they were floating on a pool of mercury. Really pretty cool.

There are some very nice viewpoints of the river from this road. We eventually found our way to Vancouver and home again.

For dinner we met up with one of mom's old friends. Of course, I got stuck in the car as usual. How come nobody has dogie diners?

And that was our day!

LAKOTA SUNRISE

©Kinsey Barnard