June 15, Father's Day!

I completely forgot about it being Father's Day. In fact, I wasn't even that sure that it was Sunday. The days are beginning to run together.... ok, even worse than while I was working and never knew what day it was! And, Jeff's dad beat him to the punch, calling Jeff before he could make the call. Jeff always calls his dad on Sunday. But, since we have been outside of an AT&T cell network, no one has been able to reach us for several days. I'm thinking that will not improve for a while, until we get out of the western states.

Looking out the window today was just a bunch of nothing. It was of course, amazing scenery, but still there was nothing there. We went through several towns, that were really just dots on a map. After seeing the sign that said there was no gas for 66 miles, we had to know it would be that way.

 

Not sure what the caution tape is supposed to mean!

There is actually so much beauty here, you just have to pause and take a good look around. There are huge expanses of blue sky, and irrigation has made it simple to grow plenty of green crops in this high desert. There is a lot of hay grown here! We have seen hay in a number of stages out here. And the flowers! I guess that wild flowers will grow pretty much any where, but they are all pretty striking.









After passing through about 3 little dot on the map towns today, that had absolutely nothing going for them any more, we finally made it to Vale, Oregon. We knew there was a "Good Sam" RV park here. Well, it is quite a disappointment! We have been staying in some very nice state parks, and this one is certainly a step down. But, after parking at the side of the road last night in a wide spot, having hook ups is awesome! Not to mention the laundry!

The towns obviously had things going on at some point in time.

 And they pretty much all have a volunteer fire department building. But so much commerce has just died there. It is very sad.

You really  begin to wonder what happened to all of it. Did the people that ran the stores move away? Did they die and there was no one to take over? These roads are not heavily traveled, either. I can't imagine living out in such a remote area, but if I did, I would probably order a bunch of my things shipped and delivered by UPS or FedEx! It is far enough to go from Robson Ranch to Southlake for groceries! These people have to go much further than that. Of course, this is ranch country, so they probably have a good supply or source of beef!

There are some clearly interesting characters out here, though. For instance, who would hang a flag on a stop sign? What is the message they are trying to get across? Very unusual!

Even the road signs have been neglected!