The trip went good. It was a lot of riding and driving but I managed to make it there and back thanks to my brother.

He let me borrow one of his rigs to get down to La Pine. It was at his daughters here somewhat locally so I jumped in that and drove down there.

I managed to snap a picture of Mt. Hood and then Mt. Jefferson along the way.

I tried uploading these on Saturday from my phone but no luck.

I spent the night and then we got up, went and had breakfast and hit the road. We went South out of la Pine and then cut off headed towards Christmas valley.

There were trees for quite a while and then we hit the High Desert with nothing but sagebrush and shit as far as the eye can see. After a while we started seeing bunches of farms which surprised me but it was still mostly shit like this.

With the occasional farm or old out building.

We went by Fort Rock but I didn’t get a picture.

We finally hit highway 395, which wound up dumping is off at the intersection with Highway 20, which is the one I drove back on to Bend from Burns, with the setting sun blasting me right in the eyes to the point I couldn’t see the damn road at all at 70mph.

Just kept it between the ditches and the shiny side up.

There is an old store at that intersection that is pretty cool.

They call it Riley.

We had a great time, got to see my 80 year old Uncle and his soon to be 80 year old wife. They are really great people and they looked really good. Talked to their daughters and got a quick pickup tour of the one daughter and husbands 160 acre hay farm.

Then the long drive back to La Pine. I was beat this morning and went back to sleep after waking up and didn’t wind up leaving until Noon. There was trafffic every inch of the way back and at one point near Mt. Hood I wound up driving right next to where a fire had been burning. The ground and some trees were literally still smoking right next to the highway.

Of course that slowed traffic to a crawl but it didn’t really matter. Like I said, there was traffic every inch of the way back to Portland. I pulled over a few times to stretch and have a quick smoke but it wound up taking me 5 1/2 hours to get back. I’m freaking beat so I am posting this and then vegging out before going to bed early.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all had a great weekend.