Christensen Family: Oregon and the Great Wildlife Massacre

We had a really good time earlier in May travelling up to Oregon to visit the Grandma and Grandpa Christensen, but we also ran into some obstacles on the way there (literally).

We decided to drive through the night so that Elena would have an easier time on the drive since she could sleep most of the way there. This wasn't that bad of an idea, but the problem was I chose to go through Nevada and into southern Oregon, a route that turned out to be much more rural than going North through Idaho, because Google Maps said that route was about 25 minutes shorter. On these highways in the middle of nowhere, we found that animals are much more likely to be all over the roads, particularly late at night.

I began driving from around 5 p.m., and we made it well into Nevada before I turned the wheel over to Chantale around 10:30. I tried to get some sleep, although I was awakened at one point because Chantale proclaimed "That's two" after squishing a rabbit that foolishly tried to make it across the road in front of the car, the second of two rabbits Chantale ran over while she was driving. Chantale actually saw 10 rabbits while she was driving, so I guess a 20% mortality rate isn't that bad considering her combination of slow reaction time and driving in the middle of the night. As a general rule, all of nature needs to beware when Chantale is driving, because as we learned on this trip, she doesn't really try to avoid animals on the road.

Before I took over around 4 a.m., we had to stop to get gas. We didn't anticipate the way we went to be so completely devoid of human life, so we were grateful when we found a "24 hour" gas station somewhere in podunk southern Oregon. I put the quotes around 24 hours because the sign advertising those hours was crudely spray painted onto a plywood board and leaning against the side of the building. Nobody was at the station, and getting 24 hour gas necessitated calling and waking up a guy named Tom, who came stumbling out of his trailer about 200 yards down the road from the station so he could turn on the gas pump. We filled up, and I had been driving close to an hour when I came around a turn in the highway and a deer was standing right in the middle of the road. I slammed the breaks, but the deer was way too close and I ended up hitting it going at least 30 mph. The deer flew off into the darkness at the side of the road, and we don't know what happened to it after that. The hood of our car got all crumpled, but thankfully the car was still running so we could keep going. We're including pictures of the damage done to the car by that blasted deer, so you can see for yourself that nature had it out for us during this trip. If the car wasn't drivable after hitting that deer, we would've been in huge trouble, but we finished the trip and made it to Eugene.

In Eugene we had an awesome time with the Grandparents hanging out and talking, taking walks down to the pond, going to the university to see the art museum, swimming at the hotel Grandma put us in, walking around in their garden, and seeing other sites around town. It was really fun to see how taken Grandma and Grandpa were with Elena, because it had been a long time since they'd spent significant amounts of time with a baby as small as her. I was actually surprised how much Grandpa in particular loved to have Elena around, spending a lot of time holding her, talking to her, and playing with her. We got some good pictures with Elena and her great grandparents that I'll include with this blog post.

One thing that I wasn't expecting while we were there was how people reacted to seeing Elena. Everywhere we went, people gravitated to her. When we went to the art museum at the university, the girl at the front desk told Chantale "Your baby is so cute when I first saw her I thought she was a doll". When we'd have breakfast in the hotel, people were constantly coming up to us asking how old Elena was, telling us how cute she is, and they couldn't keep the smiles off their faces. It didn't matter where we went, total strangers came up and talked to us because they wanted to see Elena. I know Elena's cute, so that part isn't surprising, but it was a lot different than what we experience in Utah because here babies are all over the place, so she isn't such a novelty. In other parts of the country, it seems babies are becoming less and less common, which is probably why people loved seeing Elena so much.

The Grandparents felt really bad that we hit a deer and damaged our car on the way up to Eugene, so they paid for a plane ticket home for us while our car was being fixed, and arranged for someone to drive the car down once the car was finished being fixed. Insurance covered all of the damage, thankfully, but we still had to pay a deductible that wasn't cheap. Regardless, we're extremely grateful for Grandma and Grandpa's generosity in getting us home so I could get back to work.

I'll let pictures tell the rest of the story of this trip, since we took a ton while we were there. Included are pictures of our walks around Walnut Lane, where G & G C. live, the pond near their house where I spent many happy hours as a child, Elena with her great grandparents, Hendricks Park, which is one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been in my life, and anything else Chantale sees fit to include. Getting there was pretty rough, but we had a fantastic time while we were there.

- Mike Christensen

Grandpa is losing his short term memory, so this is when he realized he was taking us to the wrong place. It was always cute to hear him ask the same questions multiple times or to see grandma remind him what he ate for breakfast.