Counting Horses then Peacocks

I was fairly well prepared for the 500 mile journey to North Plains Oregon in our Prius with my two boys. I had enough food, toys, books, and fun music, plus my laptop with kids videos as the fallback and my goal was to arrive with enough daylight to set up our camp. As it turned out we made it about 300 miles without a major kid meltdown by counting horses. Of course it helped that my 2 year old son slept for almost 2 hours, but I think we got to 68 before we lost count.

The next 200 miles were smooth sailing because once we hit the Columbia River we had wind surfers, kite boarders, barges, dams, fish ladders, lava flows and water falls to look at and talk about. It’s quite an impressive landscape really when you consider the forces of nature that formed it over recent geological times. 

With one stop for gas and one to dip our toes in the Columbia, we made it to Portland in just about 7 hours. Our epic travel day to begin our 2 week vacation in Oregon came to a close with me setting up our tent in the dark while trying desperately not to let the boys hurt themselves as they stumbled around the woods in the dark with a 7hr-car-ride-reckless-abandon.

We woke to the sound of peacocks squawking and found ourselves in the magical landscape of Horning’s Hideout camped in Bob Horning’s crew’s camp overlooking the music amphitheater where we would enjoy 3 days of great bluegrass music for the Northwest String Summit.

Surviving the first epic day of our adventure to Oregon reassured me that I wasn’t completely crazy to take my two young boys on a 2 week, thousand-plus mile road trip by myself, and that in fact, it may be one of the best adventures to date we would have together.

~ by c4hair on August 6, 2008.