Jean's 98th birthday

We visited with Jennefer's mom Jean for a week, for her 98th birthday, at her home in the forest outside of Florence, Oregon. Our first few days were pleasant and sunny, but then the usual northwest overcast and rain moved in. After a few days, Jean's caregiver Elisa went to spend a few weeks out of state with her family. Jennefer used the instructions Elisa provided to take care of her mom, fixing lunches and dinners. We went out and got two cakes to celebrate her birthday over the course of a few days, kind of a birthday week.

Jean doesn't get out much any more, but she’s hanging in there, spending most of her time in her big comfortable chair in her living room, with her faithful kitty Carrie always by her side. I think she's really lucky, that she still gets to spend her time at home, so far from town, but that seems to be what she wants.

We saw lots of rain while we were there. We didn't do much in the way of outdoor stuff in the rain, other than driving into town for a hot breakfast. Here a couple of geese are enjoying a large puddle that formed in her yard. 

It’s fun having a wood-fired stove for heat. We were glad that Jennefer's brothers have been cutting up dead wood from the forest for years, so there are two huge neatly stacked wood piles on the property. Carrie the kitty jumped down to lay on the carpet, and enjoy the warmth from the fireplace. Jean also has an electric heater/AC unit on the living room wall, that her son had installed a few years ago. That way she and her caregiver can have heat, even if they don't feel like making a fire. And they now can have cooling in the summer, if it gets too warm for them.

 

The outdoor wood pile makes photos of the yard look interesting. Jean's sons add wood to this pile, when they come to visit in the Fall. The wood in this pile is more freshly cut, and they leave it out there for the initial drying out.

 

The wood pile in the garage is where the outdoor cat Lucky likes to sleep. That wood comes in from the outdoor pile after it's more dry, and is ready to burn. We brought in several wheelbarrows of this wood, to burn while we were there.

 

We spent some time walking around Bay Street by the Siuslaw River in downtown Florence, letting Mandy sniff around, looking into the shops, and enjoying the flowers. The town has a nice feel to it, with the Pacific Ocean and Siuslaw River nearby, and all the flowers they have growing between the buildings.

The Siuslaw River Bridge for US-101, on the west side of town makes a great photo subject. I’ve tried to snap a slightly different photo, every time we’ve visited. In one of the local shops, I saw a strikingly beautiful photo of this bridge in the winter, at night in the fog, with snow on the ground. It was a little like this photo by James Eddy that I found online at FineArtAmerica. This bridge pretty much put the local ferry operation out of business, when it opened in 1936.

 

I loved seeing the morning mist over the forest from the front yard, while taking the dog out. Such a cool moist peaceful atmosphere.

 

It’s a 12 mile drive to town from the house, on a beautiful little windy road that follows the North Fork of the Siuslaw River. We stopped for this lush moist pic in the rain, at a place called Bender’s Landing, a picnic area and boat launching ramp. 

 

We treated ourselves to breakfast out every day. Jean typically wasn't getting up until the afternoon, so that worked out well. We finally were able to try one interesting-looking breakfast place, Little Brown Hen, that we'd seen on previous visits, and they had comfortable booth seating, pretty stained glass artwork on the windows, some nice souvenir mugs, and delicious food, or so I thought. 

 

But... Jennefer finally admitted that she didn't like the way the Hen made their pancakes - too tough to chew and swallow. Then we tried Fresh Harvest cafe, and liked the food much better, although the seating was a little more spartan. Our server presented this flower to Jennefer, since we were there on Mother's Day. It was weird, because we were discussing trying this place when we were at the Hen, and another diner came up and and told us she didn't recommend it, and nobody she knows goes there. We decided to try it anyway, and enjoyed it a lot. Stuff like that gets me to wondering what motivates people. I guess I just have to fall back on my same old mantra... "Everybody's different."

We often drove by a highway sign to Munsel Lake on our way to and from the north end of town. We finally took a moment to drive in and check out the lake from the boat ramp. Very pretty spot. It's nice to be able to associate this beautiful panorama with the words on the road sign. 

 

Jennefer's sister Janet and her husband Dave came from Idaho to visit while we were there. She planned to take over the caregiving after we left, until Elisa returned from her trip. She had a couple of sweet but energetic dogs.

 

Before we knew it, we were on our way back home. Here’s my view in the ForeFlight app, as we started climbing out from Eugene airport on the way home. I love the hazard advisor mode, which shows potentially dangerous proximity to the ground with shaded areas. At this early stage in the flight, some of the surrounding terrain was still above our altitude, so it was highlighted in red. We rapidly climbed above it all, of course, in our CRJ-200 jet airliner. 

 

It's so cool, that I can download a bunch of Netflix movies to my phone, and decide which one of them to watch, after we're in the air. I really enjoyed watching "Don't Look Up" during the flight home, even though I was grimacing and gritting my teeth for a lot of scenes. What a hilarious way to portray such a darkly dramatic disaster story. I saw so many parallels (all of which were intentional, I'm sure) with the conspiracy theorists that have been so frustratingly sabotaging our country for the past few years. According to Wikipedia, the film is a satire of government, political, celebrity, and media indifference to the climate crisis. They did a great job with it.

 

Mandy was once again a perfect little traveling dog. She slept in her carrier throughout the flight, sat quietly while we were disembarking, and even while hurrying through the airport to the pet relief area.

Mandy settled in again, and slept some more, while riding home in our rideshare. We were glad to be heading home. Behind us you can see the "new" Westin hotel they built at the Denver airport, on the south end of the terminal building, back at the end of 2015. A few years ago, I was considering staying there one night before an early flight to visit my sister, until I learned that their cheapest room was $450 a night, and now I see that the "best deal" prices online are $559. Yikes.