Wildfires aren't my favorite

We can finally breathe again! We have been hanging out in Bend for the past month or so, and let me tell you, it is good to have some clear air once again. There are a few wildfires that have been burning in the Oregon Cascades, and the prevailing winds from the west have provided us with an overabundance of smoke. But, towards the end of last week, it started to rain! YES! The rain helped cut down the smoke we received, and we can once again see the mountains and breathe deeply! Thank goodness!

The best part was that we got to go up to Big Lake this past weekend for a wedding! Our good frineds Apollo and Alexis Lizzi got married! And there was no smoke, which was great! It didn't even rain during the wedding. It rained before, but just as it was getting close to wedding time it slowed to a stop, they got married successfully, and we had a great time at the reception afterwards hanging out, talking to people, and generally having a party.

Then, the next morning, we jumped into the lake! It was a cold and blustery morning, but we (Julie, Bethany, Bethany, Bethani, Willa, Kate, and myself) jumped in anyway. I proceeded to exit the water rapidly, as it was cold, and I was cold, and everything was cold!

The cold feeling didn't last too long though, because we were able to take hot showers and warm up. A great end to the weekend up at camp!

Speaking of weekends, the weekend before Julie and I took our kayaks out on Haystack Reservoir! It was really fun, the water had some algae close to shore, but out where the inlet was it was much better. It was really fun to paddle around, enjoy life on the water. We also were VERY glad we had the outdoor spray attachment on Vincent so we could clean the bottoms of the kayaks before putting them away! Way to go Vincent!

So far our time in Central Oregon has been good. My mom's surgery went well, my parents got moved to their new place, and we have had a lot of fun. I even got to go into the office for work for a couple weeks! We have a couple more things we need to do here. I want to conver the Starlink to a flat permanent mount, and we want to get some mailing address stuff figured out, but we are hoping to be back on the road soon, checking out some of the Oregon State Parks! There are a bunch that we haven't been to, and we want to check them out! I will try to give at least a brief review of them as we go through as well, so you can keep up to date on which parks we loved. Looking forward to the adventure!


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