We are going camping with the grandkids for a few days.

Back Monday.

The child grabbed my hand and boom the paparazzi or someone took our picture.
I did not even have time to "fix my hair."
As if I would have cared!
This is Stef and I in Portland. The time was too short, but it was super good to see her after three years.

shelter challenged

We stopped for lunch at a state park.

Were I properly organized we would have fixed a lunch at home and brought it alone, but alas no one ever said I was even marginally organized, so we stopped at Wendy’s.

Baked Potato, Side Salad and small frosty for two: a bit under $8, and not a really bad meal at that.

So as we were eating this bounty, a lady drove up in a middle age Jeep Cherokee. Nothing unusual about any of that. Then she brought a few plastic jugs and filled them with water.

And more jugs, and small bottles and more bottles,and a picnic jug and more milk jugs. I don’t know how many she filled, and it really does not make any difference.


But I got to thinking.

I read the other day that there are many millions of people camping in state and federal forests around the country. Some are camping legally, some partly legally and some totally illegal, but they are there.

Some have full time jobs, but not enough money to begin to pay for an apartment, and they just lost their house and so on and so on.

I am not a social scientist, and I am surely not a politician, but I am a christian, and I wonder and even worry about all of the millions of people who are homeless right now.

Some, I know: decisions, lazy, welfare queen and other myths. Some fit many do not.

I have about as little as you can have and still have something. What must it be like to have that little taken and have no place to turn.

Maybe I judged the lady wrong. I will never know.

travel day

Today is another of those travel days.

We drive an hour to daughter 2’s house and unhitch and cover the teardrop trailer.

Then we drive 2 ½ hours home. My only brother will be there about the time we get there. We will visit with him a few days then head back to be with Daughter 2. Our annual weekend camping trip is next week end.

But along the way I am putting a new kitchen/dining room floor down for them. The old floor has been there since Calvin Coolidge was president (more or less) and deserves to go go go.

I love all of my kids and grandkids. No one who knows me would dare argue with me on that one, but I also like Miriam and being alone with her. So, next week when we are finished traveling for a couple of months, it will be good to be home and to stay there.

But I will miss those grandkid hugs, big time.