The Events of June 26, 2010

                It has been a crazy week of celebration, packing, and preparing. Friday night (6/18) we had our going away party. Over 87 people had responded that they’d be there. It was a fun night. One highlight was having everyone suggest places to visit. We had a big laminated map of the US and Europe (Thanks Uncle Scott‼) and everyone wrote their ideas and suggestions on sticky notes and soon the map was covered with color. Later we met as a family and entered all the suggestions on our itinerary.

                On Tuesday, 6/22, Abby graduated from 6th grade and gave a speech as part of the ceremony. On Thursday, 6/24, Lindsey turned 13 – another Taylor teen! We celebrated with family, fettuccini and Mom’s famous chocolate cake. The last time she’ll make that from scratch for 13 months.

                We were able to pick up the RV on Thursday at 4pm and Friday and Saturday were spent packing the RV and cleaning the house for our house guests – the Herscowitz family. We didn’t quite make Ben’s countdown deadline of leaving at 9am, but in the end everything fit, we took some pictures with our neighbors the Fongs and after a trip around the block to go right, right, right so we could go left, we were off.

                Today we headed up interstate 5 to Mt. Shasta. Lake Shasta was beautiful and very full, the fullest it has been in years. We stopped for gas and dinner in Redding. Abby was to cook fish tacos, but we didn’t want to wait around for the rice to cook so we had a picnic dinner and were on our way. The rest of the drive was beautiful, watching the sun set on Mt. Shasta turning it orange then pink. We are camping tonight at Abrams Lake, formed by the last eruption of Black Butte, over 9,000 years ago. Jim was going to sleep out under the stars, but when he saw his options were rocky gravel, he opted for the comfort of the RV.

                Tomorrow we’ll check out a Nazarene church in Mount Shasta and head on to Ashland, OR to see Hamlet at the Ashland Shakespeare festival. To prepare, during our ride today, we all took turns reading the different parts. Abby made a great ghost and a fair Hamlet and Caitlin has now had so much experience with Shakespeare that she was providing the color commentary and proper pronunciation of the olde English words.