2010 Keep it short, right? hahahahahaha Part 1

Mo and I have an inside joke.  I worry things to death and she thinks in a very straightforward way.  I have 12 thoughts to every one of hers.  Her thoughts are usually practical and help get things done.  My thoughts are usually all over the place and don’t accomplish a lot.  Last night as the evening settled in to a close along with the year, I thought a lot about what I learned this year.  This morning at 4am I woke up thinking about all the things we did this past year, all the changes, trying to decide what and how much to write.  Lots of the stuff I thought about wasn’t the least bit blog worthy, and other stuff was probably not blog appropriate. Somehow, in the early morning in the dark, I realized how important the family times were this year.  This great group includes Mo’s siblings and their offspring, my four kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, friends that are so dear they count as extended family.  We managed wonderful visits this year with lots of people who are important to each of us, and who are scattered all across the country.

I was delighted this morning when I opened the “Travels with Emma” blog and found lovely collages of the previous year.  Ahh.  Perfect.  With kudos to Judy for her idea, I decided that would be the simplest way to try to share and summarize the year just past.  If it gets too long, you can just click that little x on the upper right corner of your screen and ‘poof’ I’m gone. With that in mind, I decided to write exactly what I wanted to, with pictures! I did figure out some of the things I learned this year, but that is fairly boring, so I won’t elaborate too much.  For instance, I learned that I don’t have to spend a lot of money, and I learned that I could actually wait to get something I think I desperately want.  See what I mean?  Silly stuff for someone just turned 65.

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January was momentous for me.  I retired from 30 plus years as a soil scientist with the USDA-NRCS and celebrated with a 14 day cruise through the Panama Canal.  Mo and I spent many sea days actually relaxing and the five port days were perfect.

Our cruise with Celebrity on the Solstice was wonderful, and we spent days in Cartagena, Colombia, in Costa Rica, and three ports in Mexico. 

We came home to the manufactured home where I lived in California and put it up for sale for the last time before returning to Rocky Point and a reasonably mild winter.

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In February, we took a short trip to McMenniman’s Brewery at Edgefield in Troutdale (about 300 miles north of Rocky Point east of Portland) and enjoyed a day trying out finely crafted beer and walking the gardens.  The day was fabulous for me, since I spent a couple of hours in the Ruby Spa getting a facial with all sorts of amazing aromatic oils and soft lights.  It was an easy trip since Mo was already in the area house and dog sitting for her brother away in Hawaii.  When we returned home to Rocky Point, the winter was already fading and we actually started raking pine needles that month.

We moved most of my furniture out of the mobile in California to Rocky Point and  I spent much of the month fixing up my part of the house, painting my bathroom, doing all those little things that feed my nesting spirit.  It was my first winter back in Klamath since I left in 2006 for California and I was so grateful to be home again, with my daughter and grandkids just a few miles away in town. Just so you don’t get confused; Rocky Point is part of the Klamath Basin, which I refer to as Klamath, although I may call Klamath Falls (city) Klamath as well.  It doesn’t help much that there is a “Klamath” in California, both the river and the town, and the national forest.  Just to be clear. 

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Since March in this part of the country can be incredibly tiresome, we planned a trip to the warmest place in the US that we could think of, Key West.  It wasn’t THAT warm, however, with the coldest March on record, but we still wore shorts and enjoyed the velvet balmy air.  I learned that Key West wasn’t the least bit tacky if you looked in the right places.  I loved it.  We spent time on the water, exploring the Dry Tortugas for a day, kayaking the lagoons on the bay side of the keys and eating.  Lots of amazing seafood, key lime crepes for breakfast, and still brilliant in my memory is a crab stuffed shrimp with key lime hollandaise.  We walked everywhere in Key West, and the rental car developed a thick layer of dust while we explored the side streets and took photos of conch cottages and turquoise water.  We flew to Miami and rented a car for this trip, but cruised through the gorgeous state parks dreaming of the winter when we will take the MoHo south and spend it in Florida.

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Winter showed up again at Easter in Rocky Point, but by April we were able to slip out of the MoHo barn and travel north to Silver Falls State Park near the town of Silverton, Oregon.  We spent a nearly week camping in the rain, hiking the falls, and enjoying a visit from my daughter, Deborah who lives in Portland. Silver Falls is the largest state park in Oregon, and certainly one of the most beautiful.  We camped without hookups, since the electric sites were all reserved by a flotilla of baby fiberglass rv’s, but it wasn’t a problem at all.  We stayed warm and comfortable and had a wonderful time.  We visited the Oregon gardens, reveling in all the brilliant early spring blooms, toured the town of Silverton, and spent a day trying out more finely crafted beers from 100 or so breweries at the Oregon Garden Beer Festival. I learned that I could actually drink a full, entire beer if it was really good.

That’s part one of my year summary, with two more to follow.  It’s a great pastime for a snowy New Year’s Day at home. I love going back over the memories, looking at the pictures, reading my own blog and trying to sum it up.