#oakridge

Snow is falling

Look out the window with me

Come and hold me tenderly

And watch the wind blow

And people passin' by

The snow is in the streets

The kids are fast asleep

We're all alone now

Happy Christmas Eve

I'll turn the lights off

And set the tree aglow

You wrap the presents

Trim the bows

And say you love me

For another year

The stockings have been hung

The carols have been sung

We're all alone now

Happy Christmas Eve

The snow is falling

Look out the window with me

Come and hold me tenderly

The streets are empty now

And Santa's on his way

So while he's on his flight

We’d better say good night

And wish each other

Happy Christmas Eve

It was a Good Friday! Last night got down to 36 degrees. It reached 74 this afternoon. There was blue sky and lots of sunshine all day long.

My blood sugar remained in the safe zone this morning, at 162. Yay!

Once we had coffee and played the brain games, we had French toast with bacon for breakfast.

After tossing around some ideas, Nancy and I eventually came up with a plan for the day. We started by driving down to Jasper and on to OR 58, where we headed east toward Oakridge. We found a nice little coffee stand and got a mocha there. Then we continued to the end of OR 58 and turned north, toward Bend, along US 97. We stopped briefly in Crescent to take a bathroom break and grab some snacks.

As we crossed into Deschutes County, I remembered there was a covered bridge there on our list. The Rock o’ the Range Bridge, also called the Swalley Canal Bridge, is the only covered bridge east of the Cascade Range in Oregon. It is also one of very few privately owned covered bridges in the state.

Unfortunately, the mapping app was unable to find the bridge for us. The directions led us into a couple of dead ends, and we were unable to find it by simply looking at the map. We’ll have to try again the next time we visit Bend, which will certainly happen, because there is a museum and a couple of other sites we are interested in visiting. There just was not time for any of that today in the middle of our 300-mile journey over the course of six-plus hours.

From Bend we made our way to Sisters, where we looked for a place to stop for dinner while driving through. We did not see any good candidates, so we continued along US 20, eventually making our way to Sweet Home, where we finally got dinner at The Point. It’s a place we’ve had lunch several times, but never dinner. We both had chicken dinners, and Nancy had a glass of pinot gris from a local winery in Sweet Home. It was good enough that she wants to go back and visit the winery in the future to see what else they offer.

After dinner, we took OR 228 toward Crawfordsville, then caught Brush Creek Road and Marcola Road back south into Lane County and toward Springfield. We arrived home in plenty of time to see today’s sunset, which occurred at exactly 8 p.m.

During our time on the road, we saw and got pictures of several snow-covered peaks, including Diamond Peak, the Three Sisters, and Mount Washington, as well as Mount Hood from a different angle than we saw while attending the Tulip Festival a couple of weeks ago.

Once we had shaken off the dust from the road, we settled in for streaming. We started with the Thursday Colbert, with guest Senator Rafael Warnock from Georgia. Then we checked out the first episode of the new series of “Leverage: Redemption.”