And we're off!

Now friends...I know that you spend every waking moment waiting for another fun-filled Mayberry adventure to be posted on the Sandwich.

This week you will be disappointed. And why? Because I plan to be two hundred thousand miles from a computer. (Actually, we'll have the computer. How else can you watch Sponge Bob on DVD?)

This week we are going camping all week long. This is a marathon of sorts, given the two kids, the two dogs, and the five jobs which have been juggled so expertly we could join Cirque de Soleil.

First we're headed off to the Oregon coast which, short of the Massachusetts woods in October, is my favorite place on earth. We found a Thousand Trails campground that's walking distance from the beach and which has a pool, which means that you can go to the ocean and go swimming, though not, in these Pacific climes, at once. (I should mention that I love the Oregon coast but it terrifies me, too...all those rip tides and weather-worn signs stuck in among the driftwood cautioning how now and again, a stripped redwood tree will spring up out of the sea and slay you.)

So we will save our live-water swimming for the next leg of the journey, Lake Easton. Ah, Lake Easton. Home away from home, lulled by the soothing rush of I 90 Eastbound. When I first went there, Scott told me to think of it like it was the sound of the ocean, and that almost did us in right there. But over the years I've learned to think of it like it was the sound of the ocean, and to enjoy the things I do really enjoy about Lake Easton, which would be the sharp piny smell, the clean icy lake, and the Mayberrys.

See, once a year all the Mayberrys get together to play games, hang out, and relax. Enough food is brought along to tip the earth on her axis. We pace ourselves between playing on the lake, walking the eighty family dogs (we all have too many dogs), and trying to recover from breakfast so that we can root around for a snack. It's a lovely, relaxing, three-day slice of paradise. Plus, it sounds like the ocean.

So all this is to say I shall not be heard from for at least a week!

And if I should be struck by a redwood ejected from the sea, it was worth it.