07.31.05

I am a bad, bad girl. That's okay, when I'm bad, I'm very, very good.

Yesterday I was going to be all virtuous and work on the layout and design of two friends' chapbooks*.

Instead, the siren song of a mini-road trip whomped me upside the head. A trip to water was suggested,. Oh joy! I could wear the fabulous bathing suit that my friend from Two Piece Polka made. Yay! It turned out to be oddly appropriate.

I picked up MC-CC and we met up with Johnny Royal at his place. After a couple of rounds of Grand Theft Auto, we adjourned to the backyard. Johnny showed off his paintgun stuff and "war" stories were shared. After a supply-buying expedition to the local mini-mart, we were off.

We piled into the front seat of Johnny's 1957 (or thereabouts) Dodge Custom Royal. It's a work in progress; there's no back seat and all the door panels have been removed, as have all the badges and the bumpers. (Here's a picture of a fully-restored one.) Still, it's quite an eyeful with its fins and headlamps with eyebrows. It was fun watching people look at the car as we drove out of town.

We went out to the Vista House at the Gorge on the Columbia River. It's on the first scenic highway in the US; the Columbia River Highway.

Then we meandered over to Latourell Falls. The water drops from an overhanging cliff a bit over 75 meters and hits a rocky creek bed. The wind and waterspray got us soaked within seconds. Good thing I had my uber-cute bathing suit on, neh? The geology is fascinating; the cliff itself is made up of a basaltic lava flow that's formed into columns. They remind me of the structure of a paper wasp's nest. A lurid greenish-yellow lichen/moss grows over the rocks. Well damn, pictures work better, don't they? Check it out, here, and here.

After getting soaked at the falls, we wandered down to a small picnic area. Moss grew on all the trees, making their outlines indistinct in the golden-yellow, late afternoon sun.

MC-CC had to be back in town for work, so we wrapped up and headed back.

It was a lovely day. I was tired as 2-year-old after a daytrip to the shore. Slept like a wee piglet last night. Woke up at 08:00, refreshed and ready to hunker down with the chapbooks.

I needed that.

Now go, be fabulous.

*chapbook-A small book or pamphlet containing poems, ballads, stories, or religious tracts. Called such because it was originally sold by chapmen--peddlers--chap from Middle English derived from ceap (there's a line over the E, but I can't figure out how to make the line over the dang thing in HTML) from Old English meaning trade.

Goodness. If you can make it through that sentence, I'm impressed.

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