Hells Canyon

Thursday Andrew and I took a wonderful drive through three states. We had planed to get up early and leave. Andrew was to set his alarm for 6:30 however, Andrew has a new phone and apparently does not know how the alarm function works yet. We got up at 8:30 instead and left by 9. The reason I explain all this is because it will help you understand why we found it endlessly hilarious that that morning we received a parking ticket at 8am. It was for parking with our left wheels to the curb—mom you were right!

Anyways, once we were on the road we had a wonderful time. We drove through a lot of different landscape and weather along the way.

We went through rain and thunderstorms.

And peaceful sunny back country

Until we reached the ultimate destination for the day, Hells Canyon overlook

But then what…? We found ourselves halfway down Oregon at four o’clock in the afternoon. It had taken much longer than expected to get that far and we were hundreds of miles from home. We were left with three options, go back the way we came, go back through Baker City and Walla Walla or straight up Idaho to Lewiston. We choose the third option.

The trip through Idaho was definitely fascinating. We saw a woman at a gas station with her baby sheep that she was treating like a small child. There was a small wildfire starting along side of the road. We stopped at the diner a mile up the road they said that they had called the sheriff who was ignoring it, and the diner owner would worry about it when it reached him. There was a large stretch along the Salmon River where old cars and mobile homes came to die. The homes were on one side of the raging river from the road and the connections were bridges that you couldn’t pay me to walk across let alone drive across.

There was some great vistas throughout Idaho also:

Obvioulsly we did not make it home before dark,

But we did make it home in time to get Chineese take out for dinner.

We had a very fun tri-state day!

Fresh Mozzarella

The other day when it was nearly one hundred degrees out we decided that we were much too lazy to do anything really productive right away, so we decided to have a picnic instead. We had also come to the conclusion that anything involving the stove was out of the question. We also had to go to Moscow to return something to the building supply. This gave us the opportunity to collect our ingredients. The result:

Fresh Mozzarella Sandwiches
1 baguette sectioned into two 8” sections and sliced in half
one large or two small balls of fresh mozzarella
one bunch of fresh basil
fresh tomatoes sliced
½ ripe avocado sliced
salt
pepper
Plenty of olive oil
Splash of red wine vinegar

Combine as you see fit, enjoy!