Road trip adventures

This weekend I had to go to Pendleton, Oregon for a salmon-related activity for work. Portland was over 90º, and I wasn't looking too forward to going to the hot east side of the state. Plus, to make matters worse, I had totally spaced the date, thinking it was taking place on SEPTEMBER 19. Last Thursday, I got an email reminding all presenters about set-up times for the AUGUST 19 event--in TWO DAYS!! I frantically got my travel requests in, and gave Margaret a call, as she always gets after me for not telling her when I'm going to be travelling. At least I gave her a day's notice this time! What more could she expect? She declined to go, particularly when I told her that the trip would entail leaving Portland at 5:00 pm, probably getting stuck in traffic leaving the city, driving for 3 hours, resting at the hotel overnight, getting up at the crack of dawn to set up the booth, sit in the heat for 5-6 hours, then drive home. Can you believe she didn't have any interest? Going to the fabric store and sewing ranked higher on her "Things I'd rather do list" than a long road trip (which is what she did.) (And walking through the rolling sothern Lebanese countryside right now is more apealling to me than going to a fabric store.) The trip was pretty uneventful including one thing that was blessedly uneventful, but might not have been. Driving back, I was getting sleepy (despite drinking 96 oz. of Diet Pepsi in an effort to get caffeine and a ful bladder that is impossible to sleep through). I stopped at the Celilo Village rest area, where I thought if I took a little swim in the river, it would wake me up. I went down to the water and it was packed with people swimming and riding jet-skis. Since I didn't have any swimtrunks, I'd planned on just swimming in my underwear, but not being an exhibitionist, that location really wouldn't work (Well... if I'd had on my firetruck underwear I might have considered it, but since I didn't I felt I had to be more modest). Thinking I might find a more discreet location further downstream, I walked along the river bank and found a carefully groomed trail to the river. It looked pretty official, as the path was cleared of debris, the blackberries pruned back, and the trail was well worn. I walked right down to the river and it was perfect--secluded and deep. I swam around for a while and it totally did the trick waking me right up. After drying off and getting dressed again, I started back up the path, which was when I noticed a carefully written sign written in permanent marker on a flat rock that advertised for... well, use your imagination. I was instantly nervous that whoever had written that sign was lurking in the bushes. I made my way back down the path as quickly as possible, fortunately not running into another soul. Phew! Thinking back, I should have realized it was someone's lair, since the state doesn't maintain its trails that well.