Bend, Oregon....Tumalo State Park
We started out from Spokane on Tuesday evening and made it as far as the Walmart parking lot in the Tri-Cities. It was certainly an "adventure" parking there for the night. That is an adventure we will avoid in the future...if it all possible.
We wanted to get on the road early so that we could get to Bend by lunchtime...but the day had many more adventures in store for us. I was driving about 2 hours into the early morning trip when we had an extreme shake and I quickly pulled to the side of the road. We had blown the rear tire of our truck. We were able to call Good Sam and they sent a tow truck within about an hour. It was very hard to get the spare out, as we didn't have the "key" tool to unlock it. At one point the wind was blowing so hard that it knocked the truck(and trailer) off the jacks while the tow truck driver was under it. Thankfully he was not hurt...but pretty shaken up and suggested we borrow a tire from him and then follow him back to the shop to replace the tires. We spent about 3 more hours in the most hilarious, dirty, small town tire shop, complete with many fly tapes hanging from the ceiling, a couple old chairs and great workers!! We were back on the road towards Bend by about 2...arriving just before dinner.(just 1 meal off from our plan) Although we didn't have a long time to explore in Bend, we were so thankful for God's hand of safety upon us throughout the day. We did have time after dinner to walk downtown and along the beautiful river walk.
We had a long day of driving to Crater Lake National Park. What an unbelievable sight to behold...a stunning lake surrounded by huge mountain peaks. I had never seen such blue water before. We had time the next day to hike down to the lake. All 4 boys actually went swimming...I took pictures. The water is about 38 degrees...CHILLY!! They just loved it and jumped in again and again.(Unfortunatley...I cannot find those pictures right now.)
The next day we drove to Merrill, Oregon to visit my Lute teammate...Amie and her wonderful family. She lives on a beautiful ranch in a small town on the border of California and Oregon. She also has three boys and so our six boys played from the moment we arrived until we left the next day. I was convinced after just 18 hours that I wanted to be a farmer...such a blessing to be with the McCaulife family.
Before leavning Merrill we got a tour of their families fertizlizer plant...Basin Fertilizer. It was so interesting and the boys even got a ride in this huge fertilizer truck. We hope to get back to Merrill again...we had such a good time. We are headed to Santa Cruz next.
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