Imnaha Day of Rest (aka Weekend of Camping)

Whew this week went by so fast! Time flies when you're workin' hard...

After throwing ourselves into the house so hard last week, Bran and I were quite burnt out by the weekend. The timing was perfect, though, because we had planned to go camping with the Tollefsons and some others. We needed to get away from the house for a while, and camping was a wonderful way to do it.

We left early Saturday morning and headed out to Imnaha, Oregon. Jon Tollefson's family is from out there, and once a year his father's church (his dad is a pastor) has what they call the "Imnaha Day of Rest" (it's just like what CREC does at Conquest Beach). Friends of theirs own a beautiful cabin that's on a piece of property way back in the mountains along a river (the river bends right around their property, so there's water on three sides - it's beautiful). It took us about 5 hours to get to the cabin (Jon wanted us to all stop and get lunch, and it ended up being about a 2 1/2 hour lunch stop......) Bran and I hate taking forever to get places after the cross country trip, so we were very happy to finally arrive a few hours later.

The weekend was full of good food, good friends, and lots of babies! We took our dogs with us (Duke, the lab, and Moose, a border collie/blue heeler mix) and weren't sure how they would do with all the kids around. Duke was wonderful - he's 3 and 1/2 and has really mellowed out (he's a lot like Mercedes... he let the kids pull on him and all kinds of stuff, and he just sat there!). Moose was a little bit of a different story. He's only 7 months old, and so really he's still a puppy. He didn't like the kids so much, but did his best to avoid them rather than bite them. The one time he did snap at one of them, Bran put the fear of God in him... i don't think he'll do that any more.

Bran and I decided to stay an extra day (making the best of our unemployment). We were really glad that we did, because we were able to help make sure everything was cleaned up at the cabin, and could take our time packing up. We tried to swim in the river, but it was so cold and so incredibly strong that we changed our minds.

The weekend was so much fun. I absolutely love having so many friends that are couples!! I know none of you know these folks, but in case you meet them, i'll tell you who went: The Antkowiaks, the Tollefsons, the Dowers, the Wolfs, and the Stevensons. And then Sunday morning a bunch of people from the Tollefson's Church in Oregon joined us for the Day of Rest.

It was a wonderful weekend. Oh, and Oregon is astonishingly beautiful.


My computer is taking a long time to upload pictures, so i'll try to do a follow-up post with more!