Day 1 -Our first night in nowhere land

Day 1 … heading east

   Driving through eastern Oregon was very beautiful. The forests looked surprisingly healthy considering the drought and the thick smoke in the air. After climbing a mountain the landscape changed into open valleys with cattle ranches surrounded by the mountains in the back. The meadows had rivers winding through them and seemed to keep the ground surprisingly green. The cows were all grazing on fresh grass and there were many healthy looking babies. Then the land morphed into a high desert area. It’s still beautiful, when you look out you think at first you aren’t seeing much, but if you really look you see deep red, purple, yellow, and gold all layered beautifully. 

  We found a nice pull out with a picnic table and I made our first dinner. I have been excited about creating the best meals I can on the road. I brought my cast iron skillet and fried up a rib eye steak with mushrooms, sautéed onions, spinach and Rogue creamery blue cheese ( which won worlds best cheese 2 years ago, and is made right in Central Point, Oregon). I topped it off with a little truffle salt. Yes I travel with truffle salt. It was great and took about 15 minutes to put together. We put new speakers on the van so we had my favorite French play list going. We even danced in the woods after. We are terrible dancers but It was fun. I took a picture of us dinning and just then a giant horrifying looking bug flew toward me. Made a pretty funny picture.

  We drove a few more hours in the dark and were in the middle of nowhere somewhere in the south eastern tip of Oregon. A two lane road with no cars for miles. We pulled off on the side of road. The most incredible view of the stars was above us. I can’t even remember the last time I looked at the sky and saw so many stars. It was completely silent and dark. Beautiful. I woke up to Jimmie at 3:30 in morning, who wanted to wake up and star gaze some more. Next thing i know he’s blaring music and dancing in his undies looking for falling stars. I am not a person who likes to be woken up. In fact, I am pretty sure I have resorted to violence in the past when I have been woke up in the middle of night, but I couldn’t be mad at him, he finally settled into vacation mode. The man works harder than anyone I know and he is finally relaxing and if he needed to wake me up to sing along to Sweet Caroline with him and count falling stars then I was going to roll with it. I put the fly killing assault weapon we travel with down and got up and stared at the stars with him for a while. 

  Day 1 and already some memories were made. Memories that If I get old or sick I can look back on and smile, because I stared at the stars one night while Singing Sweet Caroline next to Jimmie dancing in his undies.