Chapter 285

First of all, I have a whole bunch of birthday wishes to get out this week. 

I have to apologize to Payton because I thought her birthday wishes were in last week's blog but it wasn't. I'm very sorry I missed getting this out to you before your birthday and we hope you had an awesome day.

Richard, for your love of puns, you have earned yourself the Bark Street Boys.

And Happy Birthday to Carissa and I have no idea why I chose this other than I liked the moving legs. It kind of reminds me of Aunty Karen's cat Dinky who is anything but.

Despite the poor quality birthday references, our intent is that everyone have (or in Payton's case) had a great birthday.

After being on vacation for a week, we went to see Reagan and give her the toy we got her at Grand Canyon. It was a tree trunk with little woodland animals in it and each animal had a hole in the tree to stick it's head through. By the time we joined the Grand Canyon National Park Friends club to get our 15% discount, we were into that tree trunk for $56! At least both the donation and the woodland friends toy go to good causes.

Anyway, while we were there we packed up and went to the little aquarium in Poulsbo so Reagan could see her friend Octo, but he wasn't on display. We looked at a bunch of other fishes and she was really happy to see them. Reagan goes so often, I'm sure the fish know Reagan by sight.

The only octopus we saw this trip.

Reagan saying "hi" to a fishy buddy.

This week was spent catching up since we went from plague to plane in a few short days so we went out to the cabin to check on it. We haven't been there since New Year's Day when we went out with Bear and Nitro.

We made our usual trek to Astoria to  get stove pellets and lunch. The day was clear, warm, and beautiful, not a state this area sees very often.

Looking at the Oregon Coast from the Washington side. I think that those 3 mountains are called "Saddle Mountain".

The Astoria-Meglar Bridge is a beautiful drive on a beautiful day and an ugly drive on an ugly day.

We got our stove pellets and went to check out the new Buoy Brewery in Astoria. It's an old warehouse or cannery on a pier over the water. They have a window in the floor so we could see the sea lions lounging on the pilings below. Like everything else that involves water, it's creepy to see the bowels of the pier through glass.

We had a beer and a great lunch and came home to take a nap.

While I was napping, Bob got up and painted some trim than needed a second coat. As usual, Nitro's cat-dar told him there was wet paint somewhere in the house so he got out of bed and found Bob's freshly painted door molding. Nitro got straight to it and painted a swatch of door jamb paint on both of his sides. Now I have a black and white-er cat.

After Bob finished painting, we went to the little theater here in town. We've always been meaning to go but never have. It was clean, smelled good, was comfortable, and a small popcorn was still $7.00. The theater is family-owned and there were happy signs of their children living there for many hours. 

And apparently a theater makes for good motorcycle parking in the off-season. 

Tomorrow is Carissa's birthday so we are meeting them in Tacoma for a birthday gathering at Harmon Brewery. We even managed to capture the elusive I-5 Grampa so he could join us.

As with most family gatherings, I forgot to take pictures. Yes, I did think to take a picture of paint on my cat and a motorcycle in a movie theater, but did not take pictures of the family dinner for this blog. Those of you that want to see will need to move on over to JoAnn's blog.  I'm sure she will post it because she texted Scott all the way from Oregon to be sure that he took a picture. So go on over there and check it out.

I promised you more vacation pictures and I know you've been on pins and needles all week to see something you really aren't much interested in anyway so here it is. This week is Grand Canyon! It's so big even my newly-learned panorama skills don't do it justice.

We stayed in the original cabins that were first built when the canyon was open for tourists in 1935. They were well kept up and really fit the feel of the Grand Canyon. 

The best part was that we had an awesome (peek-a-boo) view of the canyon right from our room. With a 10 second walk we were right on the rim.

 I don't remember all the names of the piles of rock at the bottom of the canyon, but they all have names.

Afternoon shadows on the canyon.

They canyon looks much more colorful through my Polarized sunglasses.

This is one of the original electric poles strung through the canyon at great risk to the pole putter-inners back in the day without Power Bars, Keurigs, or Polar fleece.

Everywhere there were "Keep Out" signs, there were tourists defying gravity. You would not believe where some of them crawled for that one special (last???) picture. I saw a girl clinging to the side of a rock with nothing but a sheer drop below taking a picture of herself with her selfie stick. The sad part is, all she's going to see is her face with a rock background and nothing to show the stupidity of her stunt. She could have gotten the same picture just standing next to any rock.

Why, oh why, would you have to tell anyone not to drink toilet water? I would drink an entire glass full of "reclaimed waste water" before I dipped my water bottle into "fresh" toilet water for a fill up. 

Now this is the size all bookstore signs should be.

I don't know where this picture is other than the Grand Canyon. They all look the same after a while.

Ditto here.

Next week: Sedona.

Reagan has figured out where the baby monitor is that that there are parents on the other end of it.  She looks like something discovered in the woods like Sasquatch or maybe a very overdue baby in an ultrasound.

Reagan likes a big ol' head of cauliflower to teeth on.