It was time to head home. We were both sad that we didn’t have more time to spend with all our relatives. When we were kids our family would drive up to Washington every summer for a couple of weeks. Some years we went to either Deer Lake or Loon Lake outside of Spokane, for a few years we went to Lake Wenatchee in the middle of the state. Regardless of where we went, we had lots of time with our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. We had skits that we performed with our cousins each year, went swimming and waterskiing all day, ate lots of homemade ice cream and odd shaped hot dogs since our grandpa worked at a meat packing company and brought home the rejected hotdogs. Some were so small we could fit four or five into a single bun and some were so long it required two buns to cover one.
The first day of the drive was long, our goal was to get to Klamath Falls so that we would have a shorter drive the next day since I would have another two hours of driving after we got to my sister’s house. We listened to a few podcasts then tried out the local radio stations. There was a mix of country and rock stations, though we did find one that played the Beastie Boys hit Brass Monkey. I don’t think either of us had heard that song since high school. We got into Klamath Falls in the early evening and after checking into our hotel, and dropping off our stuff, we went for a hike on the river trail. It was a fantastic spot as there was a breeze from the water and the hill blocked out the sun, making it much cooler than walking around town. It was a primo spot for birdwatching, and just gorgeous seeing the hill on the other side of the river being lit up by the setting sun.
The next morning we got on the road after having some breakfast, and decided to see if we could find some of the throwback music from our youth that we used to listen to on the drive up to Washington. Captain and Tennille was one of our favorites (we listened to them on eight track tape!), and we very happily sang loudly to songs like Love Will Keep Us Together and our personal favorite Shop Around. Because we were listening on Pandora we kept getting songs by similar types of artists like The Carpenters and Barry Manilow – there were lots of slow sappy songs in the 70s! We got to my sister’s place around 12:30, and I discovered that my brother-in-law Tobin had washed and vacuumed my car – what a sweetheart! I didn’t hang out at their place for too long as I wanted to avoid the traffic as much as possible so I headed home. It had been such a wonderful trip with my sister and I was looking forward to feeling my mom in about everyone we had seen and everything we had done.
