The Trip Home Has Begun

On Friday morning we left our apartment at Greenbrier in Hillsboro shortly after 7:00 after more help and hugs and tears with our wonderful replacements, Elder and Sister T. 

Shortly before noon we stopped at Pendleton Woolen Mills, a place I have admired from afar--both in distance and in time.

When I was in high school I entered the Make-It-Yourself-With-Wool Contest (sewed a beautiful green heather suit with knife-pleated skirt) and won in my division in Vermont.  The prize was a very beautiful length of red and black wool fabric that I used to make a car coat.  My mother had a silver fox collar that she had acquired somewhere from a relative which she gave me for the collar. I wore that coat for years, until the fox finally bit the dust.  Since that time I have wanted to visit the Pendleton Woolen Mills.  It was a beautiful place. A very expensive place.  Probably worth it but, as the trip TO Oregon, the trip home FROM Oregon finds the car also almost full to the gunwales so I could not justify even one purchase.

This shirt is close to that fabric I won as a prize in the wool contest, though I remember it being a bit more muted than this.

Friday night we stayed at a Red Lion Inn in Ontario, Oregon.  It took us about 9 hours to get there, due to stops both at Multnomah Falls and at Pendleton.

Multnomah Falls from below

Map of the Mighty Columbia River Gorge area

It was a nice trip, though the Blue Mountain pass was a bit white knuckle driving for both of us...

As I write this, we are sitting at M's table in Roy, Utah with Amazing Chocolate Cupcakes cooling on racks while M is out looking for a place to recycle the cardboard boxes she used to move her items into this house.  We are making cupcakes for the open house they will have to celebrate their marriage later this week.

We are thinking of removing some items from the car and shipping for of them home...I am sorry, J and A, for another onslaught.  It has not happened yet, though...