Leaving...back soon

This is the view behind me as I left the Painted Hills this morning to drive back to Portland. It looks like a great soft-bodied beast to me, with yellow wildflowers caught between its toes.... Meanwhile my #2 son and his partner have invited me to join them and four-month-old Bella for two nights in a cabin at Redmond, which is back in the vicinity of where I just came from. So I'm home for a few hours to do laundry and unpack and repack and will leave in the morning to head east again. They want to see Smith Rock, Bend, and (yes) the Painted Hills. It will be the first trip I've made with my son since 1998 and I'm thrilled to be going with them.

This morning I shot the breeze with Hugh Reed, co-owner with his wife Skeeter of The Oregon Hotel, in Mitchell, Oregon, where I spent the last two nights. I added my portrait of Hugh to my Blipfolio on the Painted Hills.. Hugh's a big man born in Roswell, New Mexico, who joked, "When I was hittin' my teens I asked my mama if she'd been raped by Sasquatch, cause I was gettin' mighty big, and I figure I only look half-human. Seem like it struck home to her, so I don't know. It's true what they say about flyin' saucers and that, around Roswell. I saw one with my own eyes, once. Looked like a blimp. It was over by the stockyards, and I think they were stealin' cattle, cause they have to eat something. Even space aliens got to eat."