Road Trip in the Fusion

Are there images that you have so fixed in your mind that you could describe them to anyone at a moment's notice?

This is one of those images for me - "home" - or as I've talked about it before "The Ranch" - where I grew up - the only other place that I have lived besides Bellingham - and that was for the first 18 years of my life.

Out of this writing will come a few more - a few book reports - stories of sisters - and stories of memories - but I have to do my church newsletter first, so I hope you'll stop back in a week or so to see what I have to say.

This picture of The Shepherd and The Blueberry Farmer (my B-I-L) was taken about two years ago on the front porch of the house where my dad was born. There are actually two houses hiding behind all the trees and greenery in the picture above - this is the house on the left hand side of the picture. We have that little house fixed up with beds, full kitchen, etc. We just - after thirty or so years - have purchased an "apartment sized" refrigerator - an upgrade from the little dorm room sized one that we had in the kitchen that would only hold enough food for one or two people for one or two days (now we actually have a REAL freezer!) - Something that was so simple we don't know why we didn't do it years ago.

If you notice in the picture above, there are two REALLY big steps and not a very big area to stand while you are fixing to open the door. Plus the area in front of it was a cement pad that, over the years had broken and heaved up - a very dangerous place to walk -

This past summer my nephews, our farmer (& good friend) Doug and my B-I-L took a jackhammer and a tractor and took out all the old bad cement and we had new cement poured and the boys build these wonderful new steps (not quite finished - face boards on the top two steps and the hand rails still need to be put up - but, again, something that was so simple, we wonder why we didn't do it years ago.


Here is a side view - an area just waiting for some patio furniture, don't you think?












If you scroll back up to the very first picture you will see this tree on the very far right hand sided of the landscape. The tree is planted on a "scab patch" about 200 or so yards in front of the house I grew up in. Farmer Doug planted it in memory of my dad about 30 years ago -

But, when I was growing up, there was no tree there - just the truck sized rock that it hides.














My younger sister and I would spend hours climbing up and around this rock - it would be a sailing ship one day - a classroom the next.

Thinking about it now, it is funny that we spent so much time out on that rock - there were no wildflowers to pick and bring back to our mom - just the sound of the wind and the buzzing of the flies and bees to be heard - and our imaginations gone wild with what adventure that we'd face next up on our big rock.







The Shepherd is checking the map and getting ready for our Saturday trip to Dry Falls State Park - one of my favorite places in the world.












One road trip and you already need a bath! Poor little car.