Vacation...or Why I Haven't Been Posting

     Well, summer hasn’t even officially started, yet I feel I’ve already had my share of vacation already. My wife and I just got back from a ten day trip to Oregon to visit our son and his fiancée who just recently moved out there. It was a great trip, and wonderful to get to see them after so many months without them being at home with us, but I’m totally exhausted after all that traveling, clocking in somewhere around 5,000 air miles…too bad I didn’t have a way to log any of it as “bonus miles”!

     We spent all our time in Bend, Oregon, in the mountains. It’s an area called the “high desert”. The weather there is gorgeous, certainly better than the cold/hot/humid spring that you get in Indiana where we live. Of the ten days we spent there, it was either in the upper 50’s or the upper 70’s, and either one pretty much felt the same. Even on the cool days, shirt sleeves felt comfortable. I guess it’s due to the dry air and the sunny days in the thinner atmosphere. My wife and I visited Lava Butte on one of those beautiful days, a cinder cone in the Deshcutes National Forest that at its top is an elevation of 5020 feet! Below are a couple of photos, the first of the cinder cone itself, which is much more imposing than the photo shows, and a selfie I took of myself and my wife as we wandered through the lava field at the base of Lava Butte.

   Vacation is over now though, and it’s back to work and hopefully soon I’ll be doing some more graphic design work that I can share here on my blog with you!