Just about the last thing we “had” to do in the contiguous 48 states before heading into Canada en route to Alaska was attend the annual reunion of my wife’s family at a state campground in Washington. Jennifer’s is a large family; her Dad is one of eight children, seven of whom are still alive. Every year they stage a three-day camping trip with a Saturday picnic about half way between Seattle, Wash., and Portland, Oregon, the two cities where the greatest number of relatives live. This year the venue was Lewis and Clark State Park.
The setting was wonderful, the food was great, especially considering that I cooked a lot of it in terms of the annual sourdough pancake feed and the grill work for the Saturday picnic. Jennifer will claim that the S’mores around the campfire were best, but being someone who dislikes marshmallows intensely, I’m not prepared to comment about that part of the reunion.
At any rate, this picture shows what is best about reunions…family members catching up on all the news. Many of the people pictured here will not communmicate again until next year’s reunion. In one way that’s kind of sad, but in another way it makes for a great couple of days in a campground in the middle of Washington.