We attended the No Kings Protest March today, with thousands of like-minded patriots!

Including George & Martha Washington and the Statue of Liberty, crying bloody tears!

We decided to donate our restored 1968 Jeepster Commando to Oregon Public Broadcasting.  We have not used it in several years and it is only accumulating dust sitting in a carport. Let’s let it out to give someone else the pleasure we had when we drove around the desert exploring!

Thanks Don Chilson and Tom Crystal for all the work and guidance you gave us in bringing this Jeepster back to life!

A view of Mirror Pond on the Deschutes River in Drake Park, Downtown Bend. It’s early spring, leaves are just beginning to bud on the trees and one of the 3 Sisters mountains in the distance, is covered with a crown of snow.

Back home, flying over Smith Rock and the high desert into Redmond, after 24+ hours of flying Auckland to San Francisco, then to Portland, overnight in a hotel near the airport, and then flying into Redmond around noon.

We woke up on Sunday, March 1 to a fresh blueberry pancake breakfast at Sam’s, but also with the news that a war was started between the US and Iran yesterday. We have airline tickets for March 4 to fly from Auckland to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for a 24 hour layover, then continuing on to Istanbul, Türkiye (now the official name for Turkey, pronounced tur-KEE-yeh). News later in the day showed Iran’s retaliation of bombing several Middle Eastern countries including Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and UAE, including the airport in Dubai! So we spent the day changing all our near future plans of 24 hours in Dubai and 5 weeks of travel through Türkiye as well as flights from Istanbul to Geneva, Switzerland and a week in Geneva, then flights from Geneva back to Bend. What a disappointment. We had the whole trip around Türkiye planned with accommodations and historical sites we wanted to visit. We had to contact them all and cancel and hope to get a refund! Then rearrange flights or cancel and rebook, to get flights back home. We ended up spending several days on the task, as well as preparing to leave NZ, store the car and the accumulation of clothes, shoes and sundry items we are storing in the car! Finally we had some free time on Tuesday, March 3, a beautiful sunny day, to walk the Waipu Coastal Walkway one more time!

Bream Bay in the South Pacific!