Must — finish — posting — pictures

Here are some pictures of my trip, but now on the route back. We stopped in Oregon to visit my friend Carrie and her family. She and I have been friends for 20 years this fall — hard to believe. We met in elementary school. It was one of those schoolgirl fantasies that our kids would play together and we enjoyed watching Ben and the boys interact. Ben thought he had gotten three instant brothers and ran himself completely ragged while he was there. The first picture is of them playing on the swingset in the backyard — there was so much space, Ben hardly knew what to do with himself, and came in happy and muddy at the end of each day — and then we all went to the beach. We were, of course, late, so we made it just at sunset. Ben wore my jacket, as we had forgotten his, and it was like an ankle-length macintosh. The boys found a shovel, and everyone took turns digging with it. There is also a picture of the lovely Carrie and her husband Jeff, my dear friends, and whom I had not really spent time with since before I left for Japan (1998). It was wonderful to see them. The last picture is actually the first I took — as I drove to Carrie’s father’s house (he took me on enough camping trips to have some kind of “dad” status at the very least) a beautiful rainbow appeared, and Ben and I stopped the truck to take a picture. I was lucky and honored to see both of Carrie’s parents — I grew up with Carrie and her sisters and they were a big part of my childhood. This was a wonderful part of my trip, and we were more than sorry to leave.