Sunday I drove with my son to Maryhill Museum in the Columbia Gorge to meet my sister and collect my eight year old nephew. This has been an annual event allowing us to split the 270 mile trip nearly in half, picnic, visit, and deliver children back and forth. This time we finally convinced another sister and her husband to join us, a mini-family reunion.



The weather played a joke on us though. My sister and her hubby were early and were waiting in their car avoiding the strong winds gusting through. The air was filled with dust, straw, and other detritus. It was cold. The next car of the sisterhood arrived and after a quick consult we ate in our cars. Most of us in my van. The kids ran around trying to lure the resident peacocks out of the trees where they were hiding from the bluster. This one came out of the shrubbery.

So we toured the museum. I took many bad pictures and this is the only survivor. The lovely baskets had lots of company, and there are paintings, sculpture (inside and out), collections of chess sets, small fashion dolls from Paris in WW2 when fabric was too scarce to use on models.

We also went to the replica Stonehenge here overlooking the gorge and the Columbia River. It is a WW1 Memorial. As Sunday was the solstice there were lots of visitors there that morning watching the sun come up but they were mostly gone when we arrived. The Gorge Stonehenge is aligned incorrectly but people come anyway. We hid from the wind behind the columns. These pictures too were no good. Below is the sole surviving picture with some one's boat motor in it. Sigh. At home I realized I had fiddled with the settings and not reset them.

The little souvenir store here is closing by the 4th of July, another recession decision. The owner decided to retire. Sister and husband drove off to check out the Maryhill Winery a few miles up the road with more of the gorgeous gorge view, and those of us with children headed home. After we washed the dust out of our hair and brushed the grit out of our teeth we have to say we had a good time. Now on to entertaining an 8-year old for a week, he can watch me nap.