Adventure Two or Cole's Parents Come to Town

The Boy's parents came from out of state for their birthdays and camped near us at Champoeg. The Boy took that half of the week off to stay with them, but because of Adventure One I had to drive him down after I got off work on the first day that they camped, and we didn't get there until 1:30 AM. Even though I had to work the next day I stayed: it would have been insane not to. The Boy set up our tent while I held my mini flashlight (re: shined it in his eyes) and then we went over near the bathrooms (I love state parks) to blow up our air mattress so as not to wake up his parents and their friends with the noisy pump.

As The Boy held the nozzle to the spigot or whatever I stood there uselessly. A cricket jumped at me and I shrieked (just a little. Okay, that's a lie). Then I looked closer and realized that it was a tiny green frog. And there were a bunch of them! They were so cute, hopping around and bumping into the wall of the bathroom/shower building.

I wandered around the corner, following a fat frog until I got distracted and went back to The Boy. Next to him was this dirt clod kind of shaped like a frog so I crouched down to look at it. It was a squashed frog! The Boy had killed the cute little thing! And then it moved. I made him put it out of its misery but I cried the whole time. I told the adult-type people in the morning and no one let him live it down for the rest of the trip.

We all came back into town the next morning and The Boy and I took everyone to lunch at Cheesecake Factory, mainly to share the most amazing food in the world: their avocado egg rolls.


Oh my god. I can't even believe I've gone almost 23 years without tasting these. Seriously, I don't care if you hate egg rolls AND avocado, get up right now and go get some. No really; I'll wait.

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Oh hey, you're back. Weren't those amazing?! Here, someone else has provided the recipe for you.

Where was I? Oh yeah, lunch. We had lunch and then I had to head to work. The Boy went back to the camp site with his family and I drove down after work again. Thankfully I had the next three (!) days off and got to hang out the whole next day in the wilderwild.

Actually we went to the local museum and leaned a lot about the local Indians and Oregon becoming a state. There was this old fashioned kitchen garden there, and we wandered around looking at the little hand-labeled signs and figuring out what spices and stuff look like when they're growing. It was pretty damn cool. So was the ice cream we had afterward. That day was a hot one.

The Boy and I even found something to buy in the museum gift shop: a fundana. As far as I can tell, they're these bandanas printed with games that all have to do with nature: trees, bugs, birds. The one we bought was a constellation map, and when we took it out into the middle of a field that night we discovered two things: 1)the stars and text on our fundana glows in the dark, which is sweet! and 2)it worked a lot better than we expected.

We found a lot of constellations whose location and/or existence we didn't know, including draco and the summer triangle. It was one of the coolest things I've done in a long time, and damn romantic* to boot.

The next day we came home and showed The Boy's parents our house (re: apartment) and his mom borrowed a spare bikini (he may have been just a tad bit horrified) and we went swimming because it was effing hot. I can't remember if it was before or after the pool, but she and I definitely discussed shaving of the bikini area and our experiences with it. I literally saw The Boy's skin crawl a little.

We watched movies and had ice cream and The Boy's parents went to bed in our library. We then went and did quiet naughty things and fell asleep early. Not at all a bad visit.


*Not so much the stars themselves as the level of nerdery involved.