Today the kids’ grandpa squired us about Walla Walla’s outdoor amenities, including the Children’s Museum and Pioneer Park, where my son obsessed on maple seed-casings and buckeyes to bring home and plant (also on order is another stop at Multnomah Falls for acorns – honest-to-God acorns) and we visited a Seventh Day Adventist grocery store and ate Thai food.
Walla Walla is hot. It’s not as hot as it can get – but it’s hot for me. I wear the lightest thing I own (a cotton dress, the only one I have) and move slowly and drink iced coffees. But by 3 PM I feel like I’ve been hammered flat. My family and I retreat to our (air-conditioned) B&B digs for a couple hours of sit-down, email, and a bit of relaxation before once again joining the in-laws across the border. The kids are having a great time (starting with the very swanky B&B breakfast offered up this AM). I guess I kind of dislike hot vacations unless you’re in or on a lake. It seems like all there is to do is to hang out, get worn out from the heat, eat, repeat. I have knit on a pair of socks and done some sewing repair – but I miss my busy home life.
Tomorrow it’s supposed to get even hotter; we’re fleeing back West as fast as we can. I’m hoping to stop at an organic or happy-chicken farm and pick up a chicken to roast (something like this, but I do not want to veer even ten minutes off the blasted highway!) and hoping we can get near the water quicker than the heat can boil me alive.