Where has the time gone? It’s mid-October already? Crazy!!! I started the below post end of August, what??? I write about “detoxing” after my sister’s rehab. Well, apparently I didn’t detox nearly enough because I suffered for weeks with something I couldn’t define, sores on my back and my head, and a horrid ear infection that had me off-balance and in terrible pain and finally sent me to the ER late on a Friday night in early October where I was promptly mis-diagnosed.

Ultimately my doctor called it: shingles (and not the roofing kind—although we do need a new roof, which became obvious about a week ago when Blue Eyes’ closet started drip, drip, dripping 🤦🏻‍♀️). The ear infection is yet to be fully understood, but getting better. I finished my antibiotics a couple days ago. Here’s hoping that is all it will take. I’m back at the beach house, resting, again!

So, I’m also back to the blog to finish that old post I started 6 weeks ago…

My sister is safely home from rehab. In some ways, she made progress, in others, not so much. I’m actually at our beach house detoxing from the past couple weeks. I’m procrastinating on going out and doing some much needed weeding in the yard, so here I am posting about my most amazing birthday road trip that Blue Eyes and I took in May. Writing about travel is almost as much fun as actually doing it. Well, maybe not, but it is nice looking back at the pictures and remembering how much fun we had.

The trip ended up being 13 total days. I didn’t want to have to drive more than six hours in a day, and hopefully most days, much less than that. The road trip part is merely to get me from one cool place to another. I don’t really like the driving part all that much. My goal was to get us to our original honeymoon spot on the northern California coast. Secondary to that, was looking for potential warm weather retirement towns where we can spend at least the winter months. Retirement is a few years off, but there’s no harm in planning well ahead. Our overnight stops included Gold Beach, Oregon (definitely not on the retirement list, but a good spot to stop for the first night), Elk, CA (also not on the retirement list, but our honeymoon spot), Santa Cruz, Ojai, Paso Robles, California and finally Ashland, Oregon (a fun stop on the drive back home).

We left on a Monday with pretty much just enough time to get ourselves to a really wonderful hotel called Tu Tu Tun Lodge, which sits just inland of the coast and smack on the Rogue River. The lodge is named after the Tututni Native American tribe from this area. The location is gorgeous. I chose a room with an outdoor soaking tub with a view of the river. So nice!

Dinner was amazing! We took a dip in the outdoor soaking tub before bed. The next morning I took a walk along the Rogue River before our ginormous breakfast. The location of the lodge is so peaceful and remote. It was a good choice for the first night of our road trip.

We were back on the road by 10am, with plans to be at our honeymoon spot by 4:30pm. That did not happen.

Upcoming: day 2 did not go quite as planned…