The last week of June had us departing for a camping trip down in Central Oregon. This trip was a combination of celebrating Mom's birthday, cheering her on while she ran her half marathon, and just having fun in a place where we had never been. We were picturing Bend to be a quaint little town kind of like Banff, Canada. Oh my, were we ever wrong! There are 91,000 people living in the Bend area. Holy cow, that is almost three times the size of our own hometown. Definitely not quaint, but certainly a lot of fun!
Heading down there I found ways to amuse myself on the 10 hour drive. I had a stash of books, a backpack of toys, and my faithful dog laying by my side. Little girl ended up coming with us and to all of our surprise she actually traveled pretty well. We made one pit stop in southern Washington, ate a picnic lunch in the truck, and stopped for mom's free birthday burger in Salem. The last few hours were the hardest part of the trip since it was after dinner and we were all just ready to be there. I did end up watching a Thomas video that mom checked out of the library to help pass the time until we pulled into our campsite just before 9:00pm.
Please excuse mom's "look" in this picture. I insisted on her opening her birthday presents pretty much upon waking the next morning and dad insisted upon taking her picture even though she really didn't want to cooperate. Notice the rather messy hair and the cheesy forced grin.
We manged to find more ways to entertain ourselves. Dog laid out in the sunshine, a lot. We also enjoyed the sun and warmer temps, and were finally able to break out the few pairs of shorts that we brought with us.
We all got up bright and early on Saturday so that mom could get into Sunriver and feel like she didn't have to rush around before the start of her half. We were there at the start line and got to send her off with a cheer. The above pic is her zooming by us at about mile nine. Okay, maybe she wasn't exactly zooming but she was chugging along at a steady pace. There was about a 4,000 foot elevation gain from where we live and she trained so dad was pretty impressed that she did as well as she did.
And the finish line is in sight! She said she felt pretty good about her run. The last mile was torture and seemed like it would never end but besides that it was beautiful and she felt good. She knew she wasn't in her peak running shape so she said she would be happy to finish with about a 2:10:00. She ended up running a 2:08:24 which was her slowest half marathon time to date but also a little under what she thought she might do. She ended up being number 538 out of the 1,382 half marathon runners so not too far out of the top 1/3.
This is what I was doing while mom was doing her cool down. It was getting me primed and ready for seeing Cars 2 that afternoon, my first time seeing a movie in a movie theater. What a great idea to have bouncy houses for the kids! Now someone was really thinking!
Until next time . . .
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