This is What it Looks Like When You Go Camping on the Third Week of July in Oregon

47 degrees and pouring rain upon arrival. Imagine my delight as I set up the tent and later mopped up lakes of water inside, with only three bath towels. Soak, wring, repeat.

We finally got the tent mostly drip proof with a combination of ingenuity and resourcefulness, mostly on the part of the Farmboy. Then followed 24 hours of being partly damp, mostly cold, and definitely tired, but somehow enjoying each other and the experience as much as humanly possible.

This kid spent over an hour sitting as still as a rock, with a pile of sunflower seeds on his knee, hoping to entice a chipmunk over to take a snack. He managed to get one to eat the seeds that fell off, but it was a bit too wary to get any closer. See the little guy by the leg of his chair? Poor kid knew he was there, but didn't even turn his head to watch for fear of scaring him off. He did not inherit that level of patience from me, I can tell you that much!

The Farmboy had even better luck with the local varmints. This one took shelter by his foot for a good 5 minutes, snacking to his/her heart's delight.

Our last day dawned clear and bright and beautiful. At last, a few hours of warmth to knock the chill out of our bones. We could hardly wait to get out on the lake for some tranquility and fishing.

The mountain you see is Mount Hood, the Location is Lost Lake. We haven't been up there for nearly 10 years, and although still remarkably beautiful and well maintained, it appears the masses have found our favorite spot. Despite the weather, the campground was full by Thursday morning, and there was no parking available even in the day use area. That's a few too many people for our taste. So although it was sad to leave on such a lovely day, we knew we were making a good choice by leaving on a Friday afternoon ahead of the weekend influx of bodies.

For those of you that have been following the progress of my soon-to-be-released His Eye is on the Sparrow, you'll see that it rarely left my side while on this trip. I stitched in a little brown fish while sitting in the boat, but left it uncharted. Just a little memory added for my own sake. I'll point it out to you sometime next week when I finally let you see finished photos of the sampler.

The End.