July 29, 30, 31, 2010

Thursday 29~~~~~~Today Pammy, Jeff and Jeff's mom Jean Marie came up the park to visit us for 3 nights. Kent found them a neat camp site that was around the corner from us and we had a good time visiting them after work and during the day as we buzzed around the camp doing our work. Friday 30~~~~After I finished cleaning my sites, I went to the garage sales in the little towns near here with Pam and Jeff while Kent went to work in the office. We didn't find much, but we had fun looking. We had dinner at their camp tonight, baby back ribs, corn on the cob and potato salad. One of the park rangers that I made a chocolate cake for a week ago came to our camp site and made an Ice Cream Pie for us for dessert tonight. He brought all the ingredients and he made the pie on our picnic table with all of us watching. He is such a delightful young Ranger about 19 years old and he sure entertained all of us with his story of how his grandma taught his mom how to make this pie and then she taught him how and it is one of his favorite desserts. You take a whole packed of Oreo Cookies and smash then in the dish, then you pour half of a bottle of Hershey's syrup over the smashed cookies. Last you top it with softened ice cream, he used chocolate mint and cookie dough ice cream. You should freeze it for a couple of hours, but we didn't do that, we just dug in and ate it. It was very good and we really enjoyed Corbin sharing his recipe with all of us. We played a couple of card games and enjoyed the camp fire before calling it a day. Saturday 31~~~~~Kent's daughter Cindy and her husband Eric and their boy Nathan came to visit us today, bringing a wonderful picnic lunch for us to eat. Cindy made chicken salad sandwiches on a delicious crusty bread with watermelon, chips and Oreo Cookies. After lunch we walked around the park and showed them what we do here and then they went rafting in the Santiam River with Kent in the raft they brought up here. They drove to Mill City and put the raft in and they got out at the boat dock here in the park. The raft is only big enough for two, so it took two trips for the four of them to do it. I had fun watching them come down the river and launch it in the park. I am not a water person, so I chose to stay in the park. We built a nice fire back in camp and we fixed burgers for the Norwood's and Schaffer's for dinner in the evening, we ate and sat around the camp fire visiting before the Schaffer's had to head back to Portland. Pam and Jeff left on Sunday morning for home as they both have to go to work on Monday. It was a real fun busy weekend with all of our company. We finished up Sunday evening with our friends Wayne and Odie who came to the park on Sunday afternoon to stay one night. We sat around the campfire until Midnight before calling it a day. We drove into Salem on Monday morning to spend our days off there.