Shane and I just returned from a weekend with my parents at their home in Central Oregon, enjoying a perfect dose of relaxation. Â Mornings spent sleeping in, afternoons spent enjoying the great outdoors, and evenings spent cozying up by the fire in the living room and watching baseball on TV. Â Lovely. Â Some highlights:
After doing a little shopping and eating lunch in Bend on Friday, we headed over to Tumalo Falls to take a stroll and enjoy the scenery. Â The waterfall was beautiful, as were the glowing-gold aspens set against full, bushy evergreens. Â Shane skipped stones in the river, I found a perfectly seat-shaped rock to perch on and soak in the sun, and we all thought to ourselves how there’s nothing like a sunny, crisp Fall day in the Pacific Northwest.
Saturday we pointed the car south toward Crater Lake, in hopes of deepening our love affair with beautiful Central Oregon. Â Success! Â We ate lunch at the lodge (French onion soup in a cozy, log-walled lodge on a cool Autumn day = mmmmm…), then slowly wound our way back around the lake, stopping every few minutes to absorb the breath-taking view, snap some pictures, and marvel at how the color of the lake seemed to change with each viewpoint we stumbled upon. Â I found it impossible to capture the magnificence of this collapsed-volcano-turned-lake in a single photo, so you’ll have to settle for these snippets of greatness. Â Really, though, it was stunning…
(this photo courtesy of Shane’s iPhone handiwork) :
We spent Saturday evening at the house, watching the Giants crush (ok, barely squeak by) the Phillies in game one of the League Championship. Â Bam!!! Â Shane was so jazzed after their win that he challenged my dad to a 5-game ping-pong dual, which proved to be quite the aerobic workout for the both of them. Â It was a battle to the end, but eventually they both emerged from the game room, sweaty and out of breath, my dad grinning and Shane hanging his head low (ok, it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but still, it was rather intense for a ping-pong game)…
I also spent much of the weekend cuddling with my parents’ lovable Mini Australian Shepherd, Bernie. Â He is a total sweetheart of a dog, and if not for our busy work schedules and Shane’s unfortunate dog allergy, I would be scouring the internet now for a puppy to call our own.
And now, we’re home – bags unpacked, laundry in the washer, and preparations for another typical week underway. Â The weekend was so very, very good while it lasted…