2017 was a year. They all are, aren’t they? But it was really quite a year. I turned 40 this year, and was determined to do it well. So I went through my mental bucket list, and of the things I hadn’t done yet, I made a note of which ones I really wanted to do before I turned 40. And did them, for the most part. They were fun! But a lot of the joy I’ve had this year was in the little things, as I reported in my last post. That being said, it’s time to review the big things.
Last year I started exploring some areas of Oregon I’d always wanted to see, like the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, and adventuring in the Madras area with my friend Tracy who lived there. I also made new memories by revisiting Yosemite National Park with a sweet friend Keri that I’d met in Europe. This year I bought an annual National Park Pass. I think I barely broke even on the cost of it, but it was worth it to have the freedom to stop at any national park I wanted to!
I started in early June with Crater Lake National Park, which of course as an Oregonian I’ve seen many times. But this time it was with my friend Cindy, whom I worked with in Central Asia. She flew out from Colorado to visit and timed it with our friend Katie’s day-long layover in Portland. It was great to share my home state with these two! I’d been to visit Cindy in Colorado a couple years earlier, so it was a blast to be the host this time. When school got out, I went to the east side of Lake Washington for a training for work. I got to hang out with my grad school friend Mimi and eat a fancy dinner upstairs in a restaurant overlooking the waterfront. I also got to catch up with my high school youth group friend Jamie on that trip. Pictured below: Cindy and I put our feet up and relaxed by the Crater Lake Lodge overlooking the sapphire-blue lake.
Then in July, I drove my friend Jessica’s kids through the northeast corner of Oregon to their house in Montana and vacationed with them all there. On the way, the kids and I saw the ruts of the Oregon Trail wagons near Baker City and stopped at Chief Joseph’s grave in the Wallowas. Then we drove along the Lewis & Clark Trail in Idaho, and finally reached their home near the Continental Divide in Montana just in time to set off a few fireworks for Independence Day. Jessica and the kids and I went to the north and east sides of Yellowstone and into the Grand Tetons, and later on a separate trip to Glacier National Park. I got to visit my high school friend Debbie on the east side of Glacier, too. All the parks were amazing. We’d all been to Yellowstone before so we skipped the geysers and saw the more remote parts of the park. The Grand Tetons make even a preschooler with an instant camera look like a professional photographer. I describe Glacier as the love-child of Yosemite and Zion National Parks. Maybe even more beautiful than both of them. Glacier fulfilled some of my bucket list dreams: seeing mountain goats in the wild and vast meadows of alpine wildflowers. Between these three parks, I think we experienced all the soul of the Rockies (if Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is the “heart” of them)! I saw more waterfalls, alpine lakes, and wildlife than I could keep track of. The first two days in Glacier had some very weak but cooling thunderstorms that unfortunately conditioned me for the summer to not be afraid of them. Bumming around the historical mining city of Butte was fun, too. We even took in a little bit of the renowned Montana Folk Festival there. We also did a day trip to Great Falls, which had some great sights along the way. Glacier was actually the last thing we did, and after I spent the day with Debbie in Many Glacier, I drove along the outside edge of the park and headed home, after stopping for lunch in the historic lodge at East Glacier Park. I stayed the night in Spokane and went home from there, back to my kitty Arwen. It was such an amazing trip! Oh, and Jessica’s family bought me my own mountain goat! 
Doesn’t Celeborn the Stuffed Goat look real? But the best part was just getting to spend time with them all. Jessica is one of the truest friends I’ve ever had, and it was wonderful to enjoy some of God’s most beautiful creation with her.
My next big trip this year was to the Southwest. I drove with two of my Salem writer friends Diana and Debby through California (with a pit stop at Burney Falls, which was even more spectacular than my childhood postcard collection showed) to a faith-based fantasy/sci-fi writers conference in Reno, where we met up with another writer friend Tracy and her artist husband Denny. I went with the latter two to Virginia City, and with Denny I went to downtown Reno while the others had a conference session to go to (I only paid for a guest conference fee instead of the whole fee). I had agreed to go to this conference for several reasons: getting to spend time with my writer friends who had been such a support for me through my divorce in Salem, getting to learn about writing with a focus on fantasy/sci-fi, and last but not least, my first cosplay experience (also on my bucket list). Oh, and a nerf gun war. That was never on a bucket list of mine, but would have been if I’d thought of it. The conference exceeded all my expectations, mainly because the keynote speaker, Ted Dekker, spoke right to my soul. It was as if Jesus was right there telling me He loves me and has great plans for me. It wasn’t just what the speaker was saying. It was something much deeper that I can’t explain. I just felt it in my soul.
But the conference was only the first part of that trip. From Reno, my friends all went on vacations with their husbands who met them there, and I met up with my friend Jas who was there visiting a friend. We drove to her house in Phoenix, stopping for some fun adventures along the way. (We pause this blog post for a brief announcement: it is midnight and fireworks are sounding off all around me with neighbors shouting “Happy New Year!”). While driving nearly the entire length of Nevada, we stopped at a gimmicky store by Area 51 and got pictures of us as aliens. We stayed the night in a suburb of Las Vegas where our high school friend Katie (who did the best rendition of Fruma Sarah in our production of Fiddler on the Roof) lives with her family. It was great to reconnect! Then we took a detour on the last leg to Phoenix so we could see the London Bridge. Yup, the one from the song, that is no longer in England but is in southwest Arizona. It’s a small world! There was even a British couple visiting in the little tourist “English city” below the bridge. Once we rested up in Phoenix, we spent the day north of there, exploring some Native American cliff dwellings and Sedona. Montezuma’s Castle and Montezuma’s Well National Monuments are misnamed, of course, but still fascinating to see! And Sedona… well, we’ll just say that it lives up to all the hype, and then some. I actually liked Sedona much more than Moab (granted, I only got to drive through Moab briefly on my way through later this trip). We drove through the rock formations and visited the serene Chapel of the Holy Cross, and ate Chinese food. Then we hiked up Bell Rock, which is supposed to be one of the best “vortex” spots. Well, I couldn’t feel any more special energy than what I felt with the storm that rolled in. And learned the hard way that storms in Arizona are not to be taken lightly. We kept saying “We should probably head down now… ooh, look! Double rainbow!” as the storm rolled in quietly. Then the heavens opened up and dumped right on us. We had to run and slide down the rock, which became a giant waterslide from flash floods (Hey! Seeing a flash flood was kind of a secret bucket list wish!), trying to stay low to the ground because the lightning was right on top of us, too. At last we made it to the trailhead, where a concerned local couple was about to head up to find us. We sat out the rest of the storm in my now-drenched car, letting our adrenaline subside. The rest of my stay in the Phoenix area was less eventful but also fun: Jas’ homemade dinner and climbing around the rock formations at Papago Park. Jas and I have been adventuring together since we were in high school, and I’m so grateful we’re still close even though we live in different states!
Now for the last leg of that epic trip. This was my chance to drive some of the famous portions of Route 66, which I’d been wanting to do ever since learning the song in high school jazz choir circles. From Jas’ house, I went north to Flagstaff, and then east on I-40, taking Historic Route 66 whenever I could. I didn’t see much that was exciting in Flagstaff or Winona (couldn’t see anything of Winona, but it’s in the song), but the hike in Walnut Canyon National Monument was fantastic. The canyon itself was worth the trip, but there were so many well-preserved cliff dwellings all along the hike that you could even walk into! Then I stopped in Winslow, which had a great visitor’s center with free stuff, including a Route 66 passport to get stamped along the way. A young businessman and I traded cameras to get photos of ourselves “Standin’ on a Corner” and I got a milkshake at a soda fountain that used to be a bank. Next stop was Holbrook. All I did there was stop at the kitchy Wigwam Hotel, which made me feel like I was in the movie “Cars.” My plan from there was to drive into New Mexico (just to say I did) and then double-back in the morning for Monument Valley, but the last big stop in Arizona’s Route 66 was Petrified Forest National Park. I’d meant to only stop there briefly, but I was taken aback by this gem in the National Park system. I ended up hiking to the valley floor from the historic inn in the Painted Desert. I sat overlooking the vast expanse ahead of me, of stark, colorful desert. Never had a felt so wonderfully alone in the universe, with only God’s presence (and a wild hare) to keep me company. And I was prepared to be disappointed that I didn’t have time to drive down to the petrified wood portion of the park, but there was quite a lot of it in this section! Breathtaking. So I didn’t get as far into New Mexico as I’d hoped. I stayed the night in my car in the parking lot of the Gallup Walmart to save money. From there, I drove north to Shiprock, taking in the sunrise and and Navajo people alongside the road. I ate breakfast at a local fast-food joint that served Indian breakfast tacos along with the usual fast-food fare, and I was the only non-Native person in there. It was all older folks, meeting up with friends for coffee and good conversation. Then I drove up into the Four Corners region of Colorado. I thought I had time to see the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, but only got partway through the park. I was on a schedule: to get to my cousin’s house in the Salt Lake City area for dinner. So I doubled back and drove into Utah. I stopped in Arches National Park for literally 15 minutes, which was much more interesting than the hour I spent in Mesa Verde not getting to the cliff dwellings. I didn’t see any arches, but the rock formations were great, and I had gotten out earlier to climb up the roadside Winslow Arch. I got to my cousin Julie’s house almost on time, and had a wonderful dinner and drinks there. It was great to connect with her because I’d never really gotten to know her, since she’s from Nebraska. She recommended that I stop at Shoshone Falls in Idaho on the way home, which was well worth the trip.
This year brought a couple more big bucket-list items: my first complete solar eclipse and my first tattoo. I experienced “The Great American Eclipse” event by going up to Woodburn with my cousins Eric and Chrissy, staying the night in Hubbard with my stepsister Tammy and her family, and watching the actual eclipse in Gervais with my friend Karen AND MY BEST FRIEND TIM (her husband; inside joke) and their daughter. Then my friend Sarah got a tattoo for my 40th birthday. Actually I got two: a real one (a compass rose, of course) on my upper arm and some added freckles to make the Orion the Hunter constellation on my wrist. Also for my birthday, I got to see my first professional soccer game! Mom took me to see the Portland Thorns, the women’s sister team to the Timbers. It was a blast! We got to watch part of it with my friend Holli and her family, and the Thorns won! Mom also took me to a Ducks v. Cornhuskers (American) football game because her friend that was supposed to go got sick. Pictured below: the Eclipse! Note that Arwen didn’t come with me to see the eclipse; I just had to get a pic of her wearing my eclipse glasses that I got at Yellowstone.
I also did a lot of other fun things this year, like hiking all the Ridgeline Trails in South Eugene, biking all the way across town along the river bike trail, going to Wildlife Safari with my cousins, spending time with my relatives that came to visit, hiking to Belknap Crater (a really cool little volcano) at the top of Old McKenzie Pass with my friend Tracey, and hiking Sweet Creek Falls trail with my mom. I also did some fun Eugene traditions like going to the Scandinavian Festival with my friend Charli and her family (their first time) the Lane County Fair with my mom and brother, and waterfall day hikes with my friend Rachel (the first one was quite a misadventure but we made it fun!). This fall and winter holiday season have also been fun, including a “German Christmas Day” in Mt. Angel and a Christmas Market with my friend Rainie who used to live in Germany, visiting and hosting family, and playing in the snow with Jessica and her family when they came to Oregon for Christmas. Oh hey, I had one more bucket list adventure there! We met up at Diamond Lake to go tubing in the snowy hills, and I walked a little ways out onto the frozen lake! So cool! I’m sure I’m near WordPress’ photo limit so these fun adventures just get mentioned, but I’ll try to post pics of them sometime. At least on Facebook.
Pretty sure this is my longest blog post ever, but it was an epic year. Hey, you only turn 40 once, and I figured I might as well have fun with my mid-life crisis. Many of my friends are turning 40 this year too, and it’s been great to celebrate this milestone with them! Happy New Year! This next year will much much more mellow (as I save up for some big goals and work to pay off debt), but hopefully just as fun with friends and family.
The Compass Rose Queen 