Miles to destination: 2,673. Oil: clean and full. Gas tank: full. Check Engine light: on and brighter than ever.
Our last day at Deck family farm has arrived and we are about to embark on the longest road trip of our lives from Junction City, Oregon to Fredericksburg, Texas.
Our last week at Deck was a full one. E’s family came to visit the farm and we had a fun time hiking to the back of the property, visiting all the animals, playing on the rope swing, and having a picnic lunch on the hill overlooking the farm. B and A also surprised me with birthday gifts and donuts to celebrate my 29th birthday, so I felt really special. It was a great day, and I think the boys had a lot of fun too.
One simple lesson I learned this last week is that farms need industrial-strength appliances or two spares at any given time. The washers at Green Fire were under stress and the one at Deck (that seems to run around the clock) decided to take a dive when I put my load in. I walked to the house seeing buckets of water being flung out of the laundry room, which is never a good sign. The solenoid thingy that tells the washer it’s full broke, and so it ran water until it flooded the laundry room, bathroom, and closet. I think that definitely put me on the ‘Favorite WWOOFers of All Time’ list.
A good portion of our free time the last week was spent trying to figure out how our things multiplied and how we were going to fit them back into the car. We left a giant bag of things for Goodwill, but it’s still stuffed to the gills and we still have a full cargo bag on the roof. I hope they allow 42 check-on bags when we fly to Ireland.
Our last morning, C and S got up early to make a full breakfast for us before we left. It was this delicious creation they call Dutch Baby – a yummy fluffy egg/pancake thing with blueberries – and of course, sausage. It sure made us feel good to be sent off with a proper breakfast, even though we weren’t going to the dentist 🙂 Although, that may be preferable to the 40+ hours we are about to spend in the car.
We do have lots of fun stops planned along the way to Texas so it will be a good trip: revisiting the crew at Green Fire, seeing San Francisco (the first time for me), camping at Big Basin, staying with friends A & M in L.A. and then seeing friends J and S & J in Flagstaff, celebrating E’s dad’s birthday in Cave Creek, and then making the final leg to my parents’ house in Fredericksburg.
Of course, our little friend the check engine light has made so many encores that I have become pretty comfortable with ignoring it. I’m even considering using a black Sharpie to color over it. I will know the car is broken when it actually breaks. I think the light should have read ‘expensively optimize engine or unrelated systems’ but there just wasn’t enough room on the dash so they decided on ‘check engine’ instead. We already checked the engine, so we’re just going to trust that everything is dandy. Famous last words I know…
Gone Farming 