Winlock Egg Days

I met Liz back in May of 2017 when we were both selected to join a department called Retro at L&I.  We both worked well together and we soon started a friendship.  It was nice to finally have a friend at work I could talk to.  We had a lot in common and we knew some of the same people.  I got to know her family and even did some stuff with her outside of work.  She invited me to Winlock Egg Days that first June we were in Retro together but I had other plans so I didn't go.  I told her one of these years I will come with.  In 2018, June was really busy and I was working at DOT and we were extremely worried about Grammie and that took precedent over anything else.

Throughout Middle School and High School we played against Winlock so I knew my way around the tiny town.

This year I asked Liz if she still wanted me to come to Egg Days.  She basically said sure, if you want to.  It wasn't like the first time she asked me almost like she could care less if I came or not.  I asked mom if she wanted to come with and she said sure.  So we planned to meet Liz and her family at Darren's mom and dad's house in Winlock.  She gave me the address and she told me that she would see me on Saturday before the parade.  I told her that we would be there around 10 since the parade began at 11.

The beginning of Egg Day.  The highway between Winlock and Cowlitz Corner was complete and dedicated on August 13, 1921.  There was a big celebration commemorating the event, and since Winlock was becoming quite a famous poultry center, they decided to call the celebration "Winlock Poultry and Egg Day."  There were about 1,000 people present at the celebration.  Otis Roundtree was the General Chairman for the event.  After the celebration, it was decided to make this an annual event.  Egg Day was postponed for WWII during the years 1943-1946 making this year the 94th Egg Day Celebration!

The big egg at the depot.  Deemed the "World's Largest Egg" by Ripley's Believe It or Not in 1989.  On October 23, 1923, the Pacific Highway Bridge over the Columbia River at Vancouver was completed and opened.  A huge caravan of cars and floats, representing the various communities of Western Washington, started at Olympia, and drove to Salem, Oregon, where they had a huge celebration, commemorating the opening of the through travel from Capital to Capital.  John G. Lawrence, manager of the Co-op, suggested that Winlock should be represented in the caravan by a huge egg, mounted on a truck.  A wood frame was made in the shape of an egg.  A canvas was stretched tight over it, and painted white.  This attracted so much attention, that on their return they decided to place it on a platform near the depot where it has since remained.  The current structure is the fourth reincarnation of the original egg.

I have been to the Winlock Egg a few times over the years.  I did the virtual cache back in 2010 when I started geocaching and back when the Seahawk logo was painted on it for winning the Super Bowl back in 2014.  Today would be my fifth time back to the egg.

I got up at 8, grabbed my stuff and headed over to grab mom.  We got onto the freeway and headed south on I-5.  We stopped in Chehalis so I could grab the new cache, Recreation Park - Chehalis Park Series (GC85GXG).  This one that used to be here must have gotten muggled so they had to replace it.  It was hidden further away from the playground and near the building and I found it within a few minutes while mom waited in the Escape.

We got back on the freeway and got off at the Winlock exit.  We drove through town and went down the wrong road.  We had to wait a bit to get back through the sea of people getting ready for the parade.  We finally got to the correct road and looked for familiar cars.  We parked off the road and went inside Darren's parent's house.  We met Darren's mom and step dad, his brother, his brother's wife and some of their friends.  We sat there for about 20 minutes feeling awkward until it was time to walk to the main street where the parade was going to be.

It was a pleasant walk, Darren really likes to visit a lot and was very loud, their oldest boys were smart asses and their two younger daughters couldn't wait to be at the parade.  When we got closer, Darren split off to do the truck with Aaron's while Liz, my mom and the two girls found a spot to watch the parade.  It was like any other small town parade.  You had the high school band, the Grand Marshalls, the various businesses and small clubs, the farm equipment, the old cars, horses, the police, the fire department and the tiny football players and cheerleaders.

The two little girls were really excited about candy and I ended up taking care of one of the bags while they collected candy off the street.  When the parade was over, we walked down to the Elementary School (quickly stopped by the Arron's truck to say hi to Darren) for a free egg salad sandwich (which were famous) and stood in a really short line.  Apparently, we were one of the first groups of people there.  We didn't have to wait that long for a sandwich.  We sat at the lunch tables, ate our sandwiches and made some small talk.

We walked around the vendors for a while and Darren met up with us with the rest of the kids.

From there we walked back up to the main street and looked at the old cars for a while.  Mom took a few pictures while we wandered around.

We decided it was time to head back to the house so we walked back, thanked Darren and Liz for the invite and headed north on the back road towards Napavine.  Once to Napavine we got onto the freeway.  Mom wanted to stop at Walmart to pick up a few things so I stopped in Chehalis.

We got back onto I-5 and got off to take mom home in Rainier.  There wasn't any more caches to get so I would have to wait for more to publish down here again.  I dropped mom off and told her thank you for going with me.  She said she had fun and learned a bunch about the town of Winlock.  We might go back for geocaching but probably not for Egg Days, once was enough for us.

Next Adventure:  Heading to Selah, Geocaching and Visiting

Jonas, Our Funny Black Cat

About six months ago we started to notice Jonas aging really bad.  It got worse every month.  He got very needy and when mom and dad were gone on their trip to Arizona I had to go over there and make sure he had food and water and he sat with me for about an hour in front of the pellet stove.  He was happy.

Grammie gave Erika some money during her junior year of High School back in 2005 to get a cat from the pet store.  She brought home a long haired black kitten.  His pet store name was Nimbus but Erika changed his name to Jonas, named after the character off of Stargate SG-1.  She took the cat everywhere.  He would sit on top of her shoulders while she walked around, he was a very snuggly cat.  He played in his cat box, only when it was free from turds.  He was a hilarious little cat.

As he got older, he enjoyed going outside and killing small animals.  They were mostly mice but a few times they weren't.  One time he brought in a snake and another time he brought us a baby rabbit.  That was the first time I've ever heard a baby rabbit scream.  It was awful but he wouldn't let me close enough to take it away.  Even if I did, I wouldn't know where to take it back to so I just let him be.

He loved boxes.  He would go inside them and be crazy.  We even got him to run and slide into it.  It was hilarious.  He wasn't too fond of plastic bags but he did like paper bags.

Erika went to college and left Jonas to mom and dad while she was gone.  She got Harvey summer of 2007 and took him to college with her for a year.  He ended up at mom and dad's house when she moved to Colorado and eventually into the Army for a few years.

He was very curious when we brought home baby chickens and ducks for the first time and we had to keep them in the bathroom to stay warm before they could go outside.  When mom got Todd, summer of 2006 the dynamics changed.  Jonas didn't like Todd very much and they kept their distance most of the time.  There were a few times where we heard fighting in the hallway a few times a week.  When Harvey came it was even crazier.  Jonas and Harvey teamed up to beat up Todd.  I had to come home with my cats, Steve and Calvin and all of them ganged up on Todd to beat him up.  There was something about Todd that these cats didn't like.

Jonas was a very cuddly cat at loved sitting with people.  He got more cuddly as he got older.  He always wanted to sit with someone.

Then May 2019 rolled up.  The past few May's have not been good to us and this year we were not spared.  Jonas was getting frail and started to squeak when he meowed.  I texted mom late that morning asking her how Jonas was doing.  She replied with still fighting.  I wrote, wow, what a hardcore cat and is someone with him or is he by himself?  She said, by himself.  I was sad the rest of the day thinking about Jonas and all the times we had with him.  Dad texted me about an hour before mom did telling us that Jonas danced off into the cat sunset.

Mom texted me a little bit before 7 that evening saying that Jonas left us this afternoon, sad day.  I already knew because dad texted me.  I knew before she did.  I cried again.  Jonas was a part of our family for 15 years.  We had just lost Harvey July of 2017 due to a careless neighbor leaving antifreeze out in their yard.  It will never be the same without them.

Jonas will always be the strangest, nicest cat we've ever had.  I will miss him.

Next Adventure:  Winlock Egg Days

Moving Day

I chose to move during Memorial Day weekend because it would allow us to have a long weekend to disassemble, move, reassemble everything and have a day to rest a little.  We got most of the smallish stuff over in our cars but we needed some help transporting TV's, furniture, tables, chairs, beds, desks, the fridge and other large items.  Ben called Josh and he agreed to help with his truck.  I called Dad to see if he would help us out with his trailer just in case it rained.  I was hoping it wouldn't but you just never know.  Doug and Jenn also came over to help us move.  I talked Grandma into coming over just to get her out of the house.  I didn't expect her to do too much so I let her help out with whatever she could help us with.  I really didn't want her to lift anything heavy.

I told everyone to come over around 10ish.  That gave everyone some time to get up, get ready, eat breakfast and head on over.  We really didn't have a lot of the large furniture apart because we slept in the bed the night before.  Ben and Josh spent some time taking the bed apart.  I took the wood planks off the shelves down, we cleaned out the fridge and put the food into the extra coolers, took the couch apart, took the drawers out of our dressers, the clothes out of the closets, the stuff out of the desk to put it into boxes so we could load the desk up and other miscellaneous stuff went into boxes.

It took most of the afternoon to make the trips over but luckily the trips weren't that far apart.  It started raining and I was upset.  Of course it would rain today while we were moving furniture.  It was so nice the rest of the week and it knew to rain today because we were moving.  Stupid weather!  Often, I really wonder why I stay here with this crappy Washington weather.  I do it for family because they will not be here forever.  I am enjoying the time while they are here with us.  We were still recovering from the huge loss we all suffered last summer.

On the last trip, I was so glad we were almost done, we got all the beds, the bed frames, mattresses and futon with some random things in the back of dad's trailer.  We got as much stuff crammed into the Escape, mom's Expedition, Doug and Jenn's car and Erika's car.  We had so much stuff between the three of us.  I knew sometime when I had some extra time, Erika and I, were going to go through some of the containers in the garage and weed out some stuff we don't use anymore.  We will see when that will happen though.

We unloaded everything and I just told everyone just to find a place and we will deal with it later.  The couch, dining room table, chairs were taking up almost the entire space in the living room.  All the paper boxes were put into one of the extra bedrooms and the bed parts got taken to the appropriate bedrooms.  I told Ben we needed to get the bed put together sometime today so we could sleep in it later that night.  I brought the cat over so he could get used to the house while we found something to eat.  We all decided on pizza.

I took everyone to Farelli's for a late lunch/early dinner to thank them for helping us today and it was the closest pizza place near the house.  We were seated at the largest booth and we ordered four pizzas, a few salads and some drinks.  I told Ben and Josh I would bring them some home.  They were home assembling the bed.  I got the bill and I spent over $100 on pizza.  Holy cow!  We took it back and gave Ben and Josh some pizza.  They got the bed frame up and all we had to do was put the mattress and all the bedding on it.  I thanked everyone again and everyone went home to rest.

Erika, Ben and I spent some time arranging the furniture so we could walk through the house.  Erika got her bed together and some of her stuff put away while Ben and I got the couch together, the table and chairs situated and some of the shelves inside the extra bedrooms.  We even got the drawers inside our dressers put away.  The drawers on the side of the bed were giving us trouble but with some perseverance we finally got everything to work.

I knew it would be a marathon finding a place to live, being accepted for the house, getting everything packed up, moved, asking for help from friends and family members and finding time to do all of this but we managed to do all of this in a month.  I was exhausted every night and could not wait for it to be done.  Now, we put stuff away and go through it as we do.  It will take a few months but it will eventually get done.  I hope the next time we move it will be into our own place.

Next Adventure:  Jonas, Our Funny Black Cat