Last full day in Oregon

Still confined to quarters here - no sign of this smoke moving soon. Here's this morning's Air Quality Index for this region:

The red "181" index (Unhealthy) is sitting right on top of Grants Pass.

Never mind - need some time to pack. Got to squeeze some additional stuff in - 2 new pairs of shoes,  3 books and a few second hand vinyl albums - it's going to be tight. Jo's got the Moose Munch and t-shirts as extras so it'll be tight for her too.

We've had two family birthdays in the last week. Last Friday, Cade turned 18 and as soon as he got back to Oregon on Saturday, he dashed off to the tattooist and got what he says is going to be the first of many "tats". Look out for photos - to be fair, it's fairly tasteful and it's on his collar bone so not generally visible when he's fully dressed. (18 is the minimum age for getting a tattoo here, in case you wondered).

On Sunday, it was Miller's 5th birthday. When Jo and I got to our hotel room in Portland on Saturday night (Sunday in Oz), Jo and I made up a quick "happy birthday" greeting for him. We got it wrong a couple of times:

https://youtu.be/5ueqZGcjDeo

before finally getting it right:

https://youtu.be/3YoISFikwZY

Feeling a bit frustrated from lack of any kind of outdoor activity recently, I decided to risk a very short afternoon ride yesterday (Wednesday), but I took the precaution of wearing a face mask that Lucy provided:

Hot and smokey

Now that we're back in Grants Pass and on the last few days of our holiday, we have triple digits heat to face and poor air quality from the smoke that still covers hundreds of miles of Northern California and Southern Oregon. Everyone will have seen the particularly devastating fire that hit Redding, where Scott and Lucy used to live - in fact, where Lucy was is now completely burnt out.

The result of all this is that we can't really spend much time outdoors and cycling and hiking opportunities are limited unless we travel much further afield.

Anyway, our journey back from Hawaii went smoothly enough and Jo and I spent another night at an airport hotel in Portland before driving Lucy's car back down to Grants Pass on Sunday. Scott had the Traeger on since early morning to cook a lovely pork side so that was a nice welcome back.

Scott and Lucy had booked yesterday (Monday) off work as well, so Scott and I took the opportunity to drive up to Myrtle Creek, where it was less smokey, for a quick round of golf. Lucy and Jo had a decadent lunch of cocktails and churros at the Haul.

Today (Tuesday), we're taking Braeden to his football practice (they bus them north to get away from the air quality here), then we'll head down to Medford and do our annual Harry and David's shop. Look out for some Moose Munch heading to the UK!

To close, here's a few more photos from Maui:

Friday morning we walked across the road to hit a few balls on the range at Kaanapali GC

I finished before Scott so could sit and admire!

Beach stroll Friday evening

View of the hills from our apartment