'Twas a beautiful Saturday morning. The sky shown bright blue and as we lay there deciding what to do with our day, we heard Finn's voice from her room - "I'm awake now Mummy and Papa!" We grabbed both kids and brought them back to our bed for a little snuggle time. We told stories, read a several books we'd recently checked out from the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, and reflected on each others dreams from the previous night's dream-scapades. And lest we be late for pancake breakfast at our friend's Dan, Janel and Lynn's place, we quickly showered, packed our bags for the day's adventures, grabbed the dogs and scooted out the door.
Breakfast consisted of Cafe Pasqual's whole wheat organic pancakes, organic Shelton's Farms turkey sausage links, and some natural pork sausage parties, seasoned up by Steve's Customer Meats out of Lebanon, Oregon - the pig delivered and raised by a friend of ours. And, of course, the prerequisite coffee and tea. After some wonderful visiting and watching our respective children play together, we gathered the kids up and headed over to LaSells Stewart Center at Oregon State University to meet some other friends and their kids for an interactive science fair put on as part of the "Song for the blue ocean" event. Kids and parents alike played and learned about things like water quality, ocean acidification, pressure and depth, coral bleaching, and the impacts of garbage in our oceans and on its inhabitants. We ran into several people at the event we hadn't seen in years - one I hadn't seen since around 1998. As the kids started winding down, we gave hugs and kisses and said our goodbyes and decided the day called for a little more exploration. It was just too sunny out not to take advantage of.
Neither of us were still fully recovered from our last bought of the winter-time cold/flu bugs so we decided that a winter drive around the backcountry roads and a shorter family hike in the woods was in order, so off we went. To where, we didn't yet know. But we did manage to find a benefit garage sale along the way.
We soon found ourselves traveling south on Bellfountain Road then heading west up to Alsea Falls recreation area, operated by the BLM, along the South Fork Alsea River National Back Country Byway. It had been quite a few years since we'd been up there so we decided to poke around the campgrounds and trail system for a bit. The campground-falls loop looked good so off we headed, the lot of us. It sprinkled some on us but all in all was perfect hiking weather. We walked the loop and by the time we got back, both Finn and little Jeremiah were beat tired and slept on our lazy drive back to Corvallis through the countryside.
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| The trail sign pointing the way. |
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| The kids forging their own path. |
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| Cat's cool bark piece find! |
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| Finn's moss beard - "Like Papa's!" |
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| The fam on one of bridge crossings... |
On our way home, we stopped by the Samaritan Health Services Urgent Care Clinic to get Cat's sinuses checked on (she'd been miserably plugged up for weeks). Sure enough, she had a sinus infection so we got her taken care of then headed home for the evening. When we got home, we made supper with the kiddos and ate together at the table, something we like to do every night. Little man is now in the habit of reminding us to say our prayers and he does so by grabbing our hands and saying "Amens! Amens! Aaaaaaaaa-mens!" It's awful cute. Later that evening, Finn and I headed off on a date, just to the two of us, to see film "A Sea Change", a documentary film on ocean acidification, the showing sponsored by the "Songs for the Blue Ocean" symposium as part of OSU's Spring Creek Project. I wrote about that experience here. All in all, it was a wonderful Saturday.
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