re: refreshing

I was very unsure how I was going to approach the weekend…I had 4 options that were presented to me:

1) go to McCall and camp Friday morning and returning Saturday morning with two friends

2) go to Richland, Oregon (population 170) with two friends to meet up with our good buddy who had a belated grad party/4th of July BBQ 

3) Spend Friday afternoon going to Payette to hang out with my buddy and his family

4) Stay around here and veg out

Well before I decided that – I thought it would be a good idea to have a water balloon fight Thursday…so immediately after JP, Aimee, and I finished shooting our video I came back to my apt and started making water balloons. My friends Ben & Morgan came over and assisted in the process – we had somewhere around 60 or so…but they only last about 5 minutes. It was a fun five minutes but it took us like 30 minutes just to make the water balloons. Oh well – needless to say I got drenched which felt amazing because of the ridiculous heat.

So my two friends (Jason and Eric) came over around 10:30pm because they were on their way to Richland and they wanted to hang out (convince me to come with them) with me before they took off towards Richland. Well, we hung out for about 30minutes and then they left to go visit another friend staying here over the summer. When they came back at 11:30pm—I told them no…and walked them to their car…and then I changed my mind ( I wanted to go, because I thought it would be a great experience and allow me to recharge my batteries from the stresses of classes, but was worried about the lack of sleep I would get). 11:45pm we were on the road and on our way. Got into Richland (about 30 minutes outside of Baker, Oregon) around 2:30am and crashed on Ben’s floor…woke up to the smell of Huckleberry Pancakes and hung out with his family. We had to do some prep stuff for the party – so we got our work shoes on and got to work, then Ben took us around his town – showing us the different sites…I swear at each place everyone knew Ben and was asking about his party. It was a refreshing to experience (if even for a day) how it is to be in a town where everyone cares about you and is so nice to everyone

The party was way fun! There were about 50 people that showed up which is just under a third of the town, all coming to celebrate Ben and his brother’s accomplishments. After we left the town’s community center, we went back to Ben’s house where we continued the party talking with his childhood friends and family members. When it got dark we (Jason, Eric, Ben, and Ben’s brother) headed to the hillside to watch the firework show – which was awesome, especially because there was a thunder/lightning storm just to the left  of the fireworks so we got to see lightning clashing with the fireworks (way cool), then we headed to a water hole – where we had the worst bartender in recorded history so we left shortly after and proceeded to the lake where we brought some chairs and sat on the dock…looking up at the sky and shooting the breeze. The night sky was a blanket of stars and clarity – I had never seen a shooting star, but on that night I was fortunate enough to see two shooting stars…talk about amazing.

Woke up the next morning and listened to what I can only describe as story time…about four members got up and either recited poetry or told a story (or two) about a person or event.

Ben’s mom made us homemade biscuits…delicious- it would have been worth the drive if just for the biscuits ;^) After we said our goodbyes and headed on back to Idaho.

That was my first 4th of July outside of SoCal and it was one of the most memorable experiences. Definitely refreshing to visit Ben’s town!