Thursday, August 27 – Canyonville, OR

Sorry about missing the Wednesday posting, but I’ve learned that you can’t take anything for granted when you’re travelling with Don. I can’t really hold it against him, though, ‘cause he was dog tired when we finally pulled into Canyonville yesterday. We got a record early start (for this crew, anyway) yesterday out of Patterson about 8:30 in the morning and headed up the 5 toward Stockton, his old home town. He was pointing out the hospital where he nearly died of diphtheria when the traffic came to pretty much a dead stop. We inched along for about a half hour until we arrived at the scene of a very ugly accident involving a bunch of cars. I hoped that no dogs were injured. We bounced through Stockton on some cobblestone highway and breezed through Sacramento with ease. Outside of a fuel top-off at Corning and a brief (but welcome!) rest stop north of Weed, we were full throttle all the way. We coasted down the canyon and into Seven Feathers RV Resort a little after five. It was a record mileage day for him, 477 miles! He sure looked like he had some miles on him. He still had enough strength to get the rig connected and set up, jump-start the truck (dead battery), and cook dinner (pasta, welcomed by all). When he finally sat down to have an after-dinner scotch, he found that the battery in the laptop was too low to do the blog, so he finished his drink and went to bed. Geri wasn’t far behind, nor was I.

Things looked a lot better this morning; Don and Geri arose at their normal times, or close to it, I got to field a phony newspaper and get my cookie reward, the coffee was made and I got my breakfast. After they got dressed, we went for a nice walk through the RV Park, which is one of our favorites in all the country. The grass at each site is beautiful, and great for rolling. The surroundings, with wooded hills on three sides, are gorgeous, the place is always pristine clean and perfectly maintained, and the people are very friendly. Geri had gotten us a location toward the north side, and we were able to pick up the TV satellite over the top of the hill. Don has told me on past visits here that he often pictures his father, who was born here, wandering through the woods hunting for small game for his mother’s kitchen.

After lunch, Geri and Don left me for my afternoon nap and headed up to Roseburg to do some shopping. When they returned, they had some alarming news; Garmie, our faithful GPS unit, who had served us so well on our big trip earlier this year, had gone nuts. They had programmed her to take them to the Roseburg Walmart, but she was attempting to take them off Highway 5 just a few miles out of Canyonville, and seemed obsessed with the idea of taking them in the general direction of Crater Lake. She was doing a lot of recalculating, coming up with multitudes of bizarre routes. When they arrived in Roseburg, they decided to let her guide them on the final approach; she opted to take them on a tour of a lovely park and the local VA Hospital, rather than taking a more direct route. I think Garmie’s days are numbered. They said that they had found a groomer in Riddle that may be able to give me my bath tomorrow, should be interesting. Don was able to find a replacement power cable for the laptop, so we’re back in the blogging business for good, or until something else goes wrong. I got my dinner on time, and they went downtown to eat in a restaurant that had just recently opened. They came back reeking of blackberry cobbler, one of the treats that they love to feast on at the annual Pioneer Days festival, which is always on the same weekend as the Yokum Reunion, but starts a couple of days earlier. Well, everybody’s entitled to their treats. We all went out to the patio and sat for an hour or so, just enjoying the peace and quiet of the place and the beautiful darkening sky. Nice day. Catch ya tomorrow.