On Our Way Back South

This is a picture of our grandson W (on the left) and his friend at the last game of the season for the Portland minor league baseball team

I just had to throw the above picture in here! We are currently holed up at Rolling Hills casino on I-5 just outside of Corning, CA. We spent the night in the Coos Bay, OR area and were planning to go down the coast but heard of several festivals along the way and thought that the vacation traffic might be pretty bad...plus having to go through/near the SF Bay Area made us change our minds. We also decided that it might not be a great idea to be on the road on Labor Day so we are charging down I-5 with not too much other traffic to speak of and hope to be at Park Sierra sometime late tomorrow afternoon.

We will be pretty busy during the almost three weeks we will be there. We are back to making Pegs & Jokers sets and have quite a few orders to fill before we start on the pumpkin lot in Burlingame. Both of us also have a few doctors appointments to take care of. And most important is to make a visit or two with my sister's family down in Fresno. Those nieces just get cuter all the time!

On The Tree Farm

2 1/2 year old W dressed in his Buzz Lightyear costume

2 month old M hanging out with Dad

Mt. Hood view from our porch

One portion of our host's farm

We are currently parked at a Christmas tree farm that is owned by our friends and sometime employers John & Lynn. They have a beautiful home on 53 acres south of Oregon City and it just happens to have a convenient RV space to park on. From the front of our fifth wheel we have views of Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens...along with some beautiful countryside.

John has a pretty nice workshop here so I have finally started to work on Pegs & Jokers sets again. It has been pretty slow going since I am doing portions of the process that I am not used to doing. Fortunately I am starting to get the hang of it and just finished cutting, routing and drilling ten sets. Only 90+ more to go. I am also getting a little distracted with other things going on here but then all work and no play makes Gary a dull boy.

Of course we have also been spending time visiting with our grandkids!

Yesterday John and I spent all day with a couple of other people putting price tags on over 2800 trees that we will sell down in the SF Bay Area. Today we are all off to a casino near the coast to interview a potential manager couple for our Christmas tree lot...all work, of course.

Ain't life grand!

It's 108 in Coarsegold today...

...and we're not there!

We finally escaped the heat there, leaving Park Sierra on Monday. The forecast was for continued temps around 100 degrees for the foreseeable future. Luckily, with Cecile's doctor's visits done for now, we escaped California on Monday. We got into Sutherlin, OR today with the temps topping out at 92. I wasn't real happy about the heat and wondered if we shouldn't have headed for the coast...until I saw the Coarsegold temps at my favorite weather site. I don't feel so bad now, as long as I'm pampered by our AC. The temps here are supposed to be down to the high 70's by Sunday when we plan on leaving here. Meanwhile, Coarsegold's forecast is solid 100+ for the next five days. We hope to never spend any summer time there.

More later!

Gary T