After spending a day at the beach, a day at Disneyland, and a day touring San Francisco, my family and I were ready to leave California and drive our camper through more of the western United States.
Early Thursday morning found us oohing and awing over the magnificent scenery along the coastal road as we entered Oregon and headed for Portland. Another of dad's older brothers, Uncle David, lived in Lake Oswego, a suburb of Portland. It was beautiful, and we had fun getting to know more of our cousins.
How green everything was, especially compared to the Arizona desert where we lived. I don't think I'd ever imagined there were so many different hues of green. The next day we toured Portland's famous Rose Gardens, which were awesome, watched bright pink salmon swim backwards up an amazingly huge river, and visited a pulp mill, where we saw how paper was made. Ewwwwww! that place smelled! It was kind of interesting to see huge vats of bright orange pulp swirling around and around as it was mixed with liquid into a goopy mess, but the smell was so strong it made me want to hold my nose or throw up, or maybe both.
We left Uncle David and his family behind in Oregon and continued our trip on through Idaho and Montana, meeting dad's younger brother, Uncle Dan, and his family at their summer home in Lake Hebgen. That was another pretty place. It was in the mountains, cool and fresh, and we enjoyed camping by their cabin. Only the mosquitoes were bad, and Julie, my five year old sister, got a bite close to her eye that swelled up so big there was only a tiny slit left for her to see out of.
Uncle Dan had a daughter a few years younger than me. Linda and I had fun playing with her. In the afternoon she thought it would be fun for us to go out fishing on the lake in Uncle Dan's old motor boat. It took her awhile to persuade her dad to let us use it, but she assured him she knew how to work the motor and she would be careful. All three of us put on life jackets, although I couldn't see what good they were going to do us. I was a good swimmer, and so was Linda, but mom and dad and Uncle David all insisted, so we gave in.
Once out on the lake Linda and I weren't too sure what to do. We'd never been boating, and it was a little frightening to think we might upset the old boat if we stood up or moved around too quickly, but our cousin seemed to know what she was doing, and were soon baiting our hooks, casting our lines, and having fun fishing, although we didn't catch anything. After an hour or so we decided we might as well give up, so our cousin carefully stood up, walked to the back of the boat, and pulled the rope on the motor to start it up. Nothing happened. She tried again, and again, but still the motor was silent and still. I guess she had watched Uncle Dan play around with the finicky motor before, because she thought she knew what buttons to push and which knobs to twist. Finally, after making her adjustments, she pulled on the rope again. We never could figure out afterwards exactly what happened, but instead of bringing the motor to roaring life, the heavy old thing just quietly slipped off the back of the boat and sank to the bottom of the lake! I'm not sure what was more terrifying, being stuck in the middle of a lake with no way to get to shore, or thinking about what Uncle Dan would do when he found out we'd lost the motor to his boat.
There were a couple of old oars in the bottom of the boat, and we finally were able to row ourselves to shore, (we weren't really that far out on the lake). I don't remember the aftermath of that outing, probably Uncle Dan waited to chew his daughter out until we were gone, but I was sure embarrassed, and dad spent a lot of time apologizing and trying to fix things up with his brother.
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