The Long and Winding Road.....

The long and winding road, that leads to.. then end of Rose Valley! I just have to share about my garage sale excursion the week before last. Our of Longview, in the Rose Valley area, they were having a huge neighborhood sale. Who doesn't love driving to all those homes as fast as you can, hoping to find something wonderful (which I did), before it was gone? And I love the Rose Valley area. It is a beautiful drive. So, even if I didn't find something I "needed", I wanted to go for the ride.
Well, what a ride I took! Everyone kept telling me, as I went farther up the road, "There are sales all the way to end!" Well, I'm gullible/stupid lol, and I thought they meant LITERALLY, to the end. The road began to narrow, with a "road narrows" sign, then it narrowed again, another sign. Would that be a clue to you? Well, I kept going, wondering all the time, as the road turned into a one laner, how would I ever get by someone coming the other way? Even that didn't disuade me!

And I'm not talking just a one lane
road! What I'm saying is, on the left side, was a rock bank with huge bolders, and evidence that some of the bolders have ocassionally come loose. On the other side of the road, the pavement is giving way, kinda crumbly you know? And there are drop offs to the river flowing along it. I first thought of my sister. She's the one who lent me her underwear in 2nd grade when I had forgotten mine. She's also the one who is deathly afraid of heights. She wouldn't go up and escalator. She won't go over overpasses in Portland. She won't drive to Bend in either direction. (She probably closes her eyes when her husband drives!) Well, I was thinking of her as I began to have a fear come over me. I had driven miles, had seen no one, had no idea where this road was going, and had no idea if I was going to have to back down this road at some point.
My dad was a truck driver, though, and he taught me to drive going backwards with my mirrors, before I got to drive forwards. So, the persistant thought that maybe I wasn't crazy ruled the side of me that thought maybe fear was a good thing in some cases. Eventually, I couldn't believe it, but some people actually lived up there! I should have done the right thing right then and turned around while I had the chance, but I thought "Maybe something wonderful is at the end!" I passed 2 more houses!
There were 2 ladies walking along the road, and my first question was, "Are there any garage sales up here?" They looked at me like I was scatterbrained, which I have been told I am. Smiles help in this situation, but I always have this thought that even really crazy kooks smile, some more than regular people. Oh well, smiling is a habit with me and although I didn't receive one of those smiles back, I got my info. NO, there is no garage sale up here! My second question, was, "How do you get out of here in a storm?" Obviously, the river must flood up there, the way the road was crumbling. Obviously, with as wooded as it was, trees have to be falling in a wind storm. It was scary enough on a sunny day! They told me the only other way to evacuate was if Weyerhauser opened it's logging road gates up ahead!
Well, I don't know about you, but I love that there are country roads. I often drive to my small town with only one stoplight, 3 miles away, going the "scenic route". Or if I go to my daughter's up the road about 5 miles, I will go all the way around the long way, just because I love to ride the country roads, see the sites, watch for wild animals. My motto is, if the car's running good, and there's gas in the tank, it doesn't matter if you get lost, you just enjoy the ride.
The next day, I told my husband and kids, "I have a ride I want to take you on!!" So, we packed up the kids and got in his truck and headed for the hills. We got not too far down the road, and my husband says, "You seriously didn't drive up here, did you?" Well, ...yes. We got a little farther, and he's saying, "Did you even think how you would turn around????" A little farther, and he's asking, "Did you stop to think NO ONE knew where you were?" Well...no.
The lucky thing for me, was, he loved the scenery, too. We got farther up, clear to the gate at the end of the county road, we got out, and he and the kids went down to the river and played around. He thought it looked like a great fishing hole.
So the moral to my story, "When you go garage saleing, ENJOY THE RIDE!!!"