Oregon to the Hills

21 hours. That would be the drive time it took from dear Aurora, CO to Silverton, OR. Jake, Jared, Fred, Dan & Tess, Autumn, Jeff E, Chel and myself sardined ourselves in to a suburban and headed out to OR for Jesse Rufener and Laura Sinn's wedding. We were going to leave around 3 or 4 am on the 14th but at like 9 us girls got a call from the boys who were itching to head out. So at 10:30pm we departed. Everyone was pretty strong for the first couple hours with Jake driving and chel and I co-piloting. Everyone dropped pretty rapidly nearing 1am only to be annoyingly woken up every 2 hours by Jake's pit stops under the stars! My favoriate part of the drive out there was the Lewis and Clark highway area along the Columbia River Gorge. It seemed like it could easily have been what I picture Ireland to be like. Gorge-ous! Oregon was beautiful. Mom said that when we were out there in '02 I had fallen in love with it, but I really don't remember anything but biting magnets at the Cheese factory or posing like sea lions at the World's largest Sea Lion Cave. No matter, my eyes were so tired after all the looking and taking in of God's landscapes. It was so great to see friends that I haven't seen in a good two years. When you are away from your friend group, it's easy to forget what a blessing all those times were. It all came back very strong and emotionally for me. I think chel and I cried only a handful of times though...! It was really strange to see so many people in the Silverton church that I have never heard of but knew who they were related to because of who they looked like from Kansas! Oh and one of Linny's uncles got really unsure of the Bahr sisters since chel upon thinking he was joking when asking if we two were married, told him we were married to each other! He was pretty confused. Hey Dad, we met a lady named Bess Dietrich. She said we were related...but we didn't know so we just smiled and said that yes you were still up to your ornery habits. We didn't leave OR til 11:30pm sunday evening and made it back safely after 18 hours and a different route home. Good trip. Blessed weekend.

My Kansas/Ohio Family

Dom, Kayla, and myself took a trip to the mountains today. We went to Evergreen and hiked in the Elk Meadow trails. Instead of summiting our "niner", we found a haven from the 60 mph wind gusts and ate lunch and got sunburned : ) We saw something really sad on the way to the mountains. On the over head announcement billboard thing..ya I don't know what else to call it...it said there was an accident ahead and to expect delays. When we got to the wreck it was one motorcycle lying over against the railing. The part of the highway was where the West bound was about 30 ft above the East bound. When we got farther ahead the girls looked back and could see the cop cars below blocking the opposite direction traffic. Our guess is he flew over the railing and did not have a pretty roll down that pretty steep hill. Dan asked me if I am going to rethink riding my moto. No...but boy was that horrible to come upon. We didn't really see any wild life but some chipmunks, but none the less we had a very enjoyable hike. I was pretty wowed at all the 60 year old mountain bikers we saw. Yet, it just didn't seem like a good time to me.

Dad...we are making VERY good use of your volleyball poles! Thank you soooo much! We got them set up this evening only to have a cold north wind start up. Oh and there was a Coroner in front of the house a couple down from us. The neighbors across the street were all out on their porches watching the whole thing. That's the second time in a month. I'm thinking in this neighborhood we will probably never find out what actually happened.