Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Day One - Umpqua National Forest

We are embarking on this road trip with only a couple of destinations in mind:  Ashland and the John Day Fossil Beds.  Everything else we see will be due to our mood, mojo and discoveries along the way.  We only have reservations for the first two nights and will probably make no further ones in advance. 

Since we are going to Ashland and it is at least a five hour drive from Portland we booked a place 25 miles from Roseburg in the direction of the Umpqua National Forest to break up the trip and adhere to our guideline of not driving too much in a single day. 

We were driving in Roseburg to find a lunch spot we received a wonderful phone call.  It was from Guide Dogs for the Blind about adopting a one year old black lab named Jimbo. Just a couple of days earlier our friends Stuart and Richard were at our home as dinner guests and they mentioned that they were caring for a sweet young dog that was going through a “career change” and is up for adoption since he could not be a guide dog for medical reasons.  After we expressed interest in meeting Jimbo they generously agreed to bring him by our home the next morning so we could meet him and see how Jimbo and the cats interacted.  We quickly determined that Jimbo is a great fit for our family so Stuart and Richard wrote a glowing recommendation on our behalf for Jimbo’s adoption to the Guide Dogs for the Blind.  We expected little from the recommendation since the adoption list is long and we only recently applied but now it looks like we will bring Jimbo to his new home on Friday, September 16.  We are extremely excited!  Marco and Jake are not as excited.  We think Buddy is excited too.


Love at first lick

Pals for life


After we checked into our basic motel, which was a neat log cabin, we drove farther into the forest to view a couple of waterfalls each accompanied by a mile hike. The first stop was Toketee Falls and the second was Watson Falls.  These are two of the tallest and most impressive falls in the area.


Toketee Falls

Tom pondering his navel at Toketee Falls

Watson Falls

Watson Creek

Watson Creek

Watson Creek

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