Twisp of Fate

We made a quick trip to Portland, Oregon this past weekend.  One reason was to pick up a load of oak display cases from our friends who own The Real Mother Goose Gallery in Portland.  These are cases that Rick built for the stores probably 25-30 years ago (there were three stores at the time, now down to two – one downtown and one at the Portland Airport).  Stan has been warehousing them for quite a while and was motivated both to get rid of them, and to help out some of the galleries here in the valley.  They are destined for the Confluence Gallery in Twisp, Winthrop Gallery in Winthrop, and the new Methow Valley Interpretive Center that is opening on the TwispWorks campus.

We wound up with more cases ordered than would fit in our truck and cargo trailer, so rented a 12-foot U-Haul down there – and still didn’t quite get everything in.

We stayed with our friends who own the store, and bless their hearts, they also opened their home to some of our family who came up from Medford/Ashland to see us while we were there.  Rick’s daughter and her husband were there, along with her oldest son (our grandson) and his wife and 2 little ones.  So yes – we are in our early 60’s and we have two great-grandchildren!  It’s a long story which I won’t relate here, with a happy ending.  We were all together on Friday and Saturday nights, and had a wonderful long visit.

On Saturday, while Rick and Stan were loading the U-Haul, Judy and I took the two little ones (one 4 and the other almost-6) to the Children’s Museum near the Portland Zoo.  We took the Max train from downtown, which was a fun adventure for the kids in itself.  The museum has many different interactive rooms and they were able to play for hours.  Judy is an experienced mom and ex-teacher of early grades, so I was glad to have her along (and besides, it gave us some time together just for ourselves).  Unfortunately, I was totally lame and forgot to bring my camera!

But here is a family picture taken Sunday morning before we all went our separate ways – 4 generations:

The drive home Sunday was long but scenic and interesting.  It took us about 10 hours.  We went up the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge, crossing at Biggs and then heading up east of the Cascades through Goldendale, Yakima and Elllensburg.  There, we cut east and then up to Wenatchee and on to home.  There were dark clouds all around in the mountains, and it was really windy in the southern part of Washington, but we never actually experienced rain.  We saw a huge dust storm down in the valley south of Toppenish, and they were diverting traffic around it.  Turns out there was a big pile-up of cars (we thought the police officer said 20, but when I look online it says 5) so we managed to avoid a bad situation there.

We arrived in Twisp about 8 pm in time to grab dinner at the pub, then home under a starry sky.  But we woke up the next morning to this:

A storm front had moved in overnight, as predicted, and it was snowing and blowing all day.  We had to unload the truck and trailer though, and return the U-Haul to Omak (the Twisp U-Haul place went out of business a year or so ago).  Faithful friends and helpers stepped up to the plate, though, so the unloading went easier than we feared.  It is about a 40-mile drive to Omak, over 4000′ Loup Loup Pass, so that part wasn’t a lot of fun, but we made it.  Today, of course, it is all blue and sunny again!