Gus’ drawing took a huge leap today from random swirling clouds of scrible to people.

Here we see Charles on the left, Gus in the middle and me on the right:

Later that night Grandpa dropped by for dinner.

So Gus drew him too:

So it was great to be able to squeeze in a quick playdate with Chris and April and a dinner with Theresa. And a belated birthday dinner with Amanda/Leigh in Portland last night.

Lows:
Missing Tammy in Eugene

Running out of gas climbing Skinners Butte (yay for AAA)

Highs:
Reminiscing while wandering around the Eugene mall -seeing how much it’s changed

Following along with Occupy Mosier which is getting lots of news coverage for being the smallest camp in perhaps the world

We left SF and were headed to an rv park in Vacaville and stopped for dinner in Fairfield just as the winds picked up to 40 mph. The back was swaying just sitting there and huge palm branches were dropping into the middle of the streets. So we stayed parked on Main Street and went to bed that night listening to the winds which lasted till around 1:30am. At 3am we had a knock on the door from an officer who asked us to move to a local strip mall. I pretty much expected it and knew we had a good excuse and the guy was very nice about it, but it’s still a bit jarring to have someone pound on your door in the middle of the night.

The plug we used to charge the iPhones when not at rv park mysteriously quit working. Further investigation revealed a dime shoved into socket.

Police officer in Red Bluff knocked on the door in the middle of the afternoon while Gus was sleeping in his car seat in front and Charles had moved to the back to read (I was out gathering info). They asked for his i.d. because someone had reported an abandoned child.

Got halfway to Klamath Falls when we realized the road was white with frost on either side -and we were still headed up hill. Sure enough, it was calling for 50% chance of snow there overnight. So we did our first backtracking of the trip and headed for Ashland instead.

Muffler dropped and scraped along the fwy as we were just crossing the pass between California and Oregon. Charles jumped out in the fading light to try to tie it up somehow with the string of Xmas lights I bought in Fresno

Our two month run of sunny warm weather came to a screeching halt as we passed the Oregon border -and we discovered that our heater doesn’t work

My laptop died

Highs:
Sacremento old town was cute -there’s an old school house with old rules the teachers had to obey like “no getting married” and “no joining sufferage groups”

Chico.

The muffler guy in Medford who took care of us on a Saturday and was both quick and cheap. And super nice.

Getting to finally wear the sweater that Amanda knitted for me

Our first real rain coincided with our first rv park with fast enough wifi to watch Modern Family on Hulu (pre dead laptop)

Almost home : )

We also did a mini Halloween night with Gus in one of my favorite old neighborhoods, Hayes Valley. Wow, has it changed. They moved the traffic flow around and added community gardens and a gathering square.

Gus got to trick or treat at a few houses then jump around at people along the main strip shops shouting ‘happy Halloween!’ while waving his sword.

That night we ended up staying in town too late to reach the rv park so we looked for a spot in the city. That was flat. And that didn’t have street cleaning scheduled in the middle if the night. We ended up with a spot way up in Pacific Heights, next to a park and across the street from one of the most expensive houses in the city. No calls to police to ask us to move this time though. And in the morning we discovered the park had an amazing kids’ area to boot.

(it was all Gus’ idea)

My little peace-nick, however, was much more interested in the swords than any of the rest of it.

It’s been an intense trip and we have a ton of info to process. Plus, it’s a tiny RV for a three year old that we fear will be made entirely too small if the weather takes away the playgrounds and pools we’ve come to rely on. Plus we have a great sublet in downtown Mosier for just the right amount of time.

So we’re looking forward to catching up before we hit the road again!