Excursion

After taking up a paintbrush for a bit on Friday to help Vic and our friend Rosemary prime the kitchen for painting, the exhaustion of the past week’s efforts caught up. Saturday morning, Vic proposed an escape day. In fact, he insisted. Road trip therapy, and that was that.

We had been eager to see the Grand Ronde River Valley, so we packed a lunch and headed south, through Asotin, and southwest from there through the hills. We went as far as Troy, Oregon along the Grand Ronde. We took a different route home along Montgomery Ridge Road, and went south to where the Grand Ronde flows into the Snake River. Along the way, we stopped to see some Nez Perce petroglyphs, which are honestly not awfully high art. The country through the canyon is absolutely breathtaking. And I discovered that the Grand Ronde River has a lovely voice.

Unhappily, either my camera or my computer dumbed, and failed to load all the pictures in the camera. More unhappily, I did not realize this at the time that I clicked the box to erase images from the camera as they downloaded to the computer. Hence you cannot see the picture of my heroic husband standing on a rock next to the Snake River; nor can you see the photo of the myriad of cars, trucks, and campers parked at Hellers Bar along the Snake River, the hundreds of owners of which presumably were out getting away from it all.

Mechanical failure notwithstanding, I discovered that my own energy cells are just like a cell phone battery. If I wait until they are fully discharged to recharge them, they retain their charge longer. At least I hope they will: I felt completely relaxed and somewhat revived by the beauty of the rivers and the canyon country. Monday, I might even be ready to help apply a coat of Slender Reed to our kitchen walls. It’s the first from the right.