Dear Friends & Family:
It’s been a couple of years since we have sent out our annual holiday greetings. Not because we didn’t care but because our life over the last two years has been a whirlwind. In 2015 we decided to retire and each of us worked about a month. In 2016 we reduced our work to a week! Our lives in the last two years have focused on recreation and living life to the fullest. An abbreviated (but not short) description follows.
In February 2015, with Mt. Bachelor season pass tickets in hand, we headed east to spend 3 weeks staying with our friend Maggie Jackson in Tumalo, about 8 miles north of Bend. The 2014-2015 winter was warm and dry with little opportunity to ski on quality snow. Fortunately we had mountain bikes and explored many trails that are typically not rideable in the winter…we are grateful for the drought for introducing us to mountain bike trail riding.
In March we spent 2 weeks in Hawaii: one week on Maui at Hana (two nights in a treehouse!) and another week on the Big Island staying at Volcano and Kona. We spent most of our time exploring sights with some beach and swimming time. In Kona we met up for several days with Brian and Ginnie, friends from Jacksonville, and had a great time.
Rilea went to Arizona for spring break
April was spent in Arizona and Utah explorating and mountain bike riding. After 2 weeks in Sedonna, AZ we headed north to Hurricane, UT near Zion National Park. We spent a week on Gooseberry Mesa where we could ride trails from camp.
Then we headed to Moab stopping at Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capital Reef, Escolonda, and Horse Canyon in Canyonlands National Park. It snowed for 2 days enroute so the weather was not well suited for Bryce Canyon and Capital Reef exporation.
In June we went to Rilea’s graduation ceremony at Oregon State.
then to Steens Mtn in Eastern Oregon for a week.
In July we joined friends to raft 5 days on the Middle Fork Salmon River in Idaho.
Followed by a week of backpacking in the Sawtooth Wilderness.
In August we rafted the Rogue River twice, once alone and another trip with kids and friends.
September’s adventure was a week long backpack in the Hoover and Emigrant Lakes, Wilderness areas through the northeast corner of Yosemite National Park, spending a night at Dorothy Lake!
In summer, 2015 we decided to try out Central Oregon living so we purchased a house under construction in Redmond. We moved in the day before Thanksgiving with 6 inches of fresh snow over a steep, often icy driveway.
Initially we planned to spend half our time at the coast and half east of the Cascades but soon changed that split to 10%/90%. We recently decided to move to Central Oregon full time. Our home is in a modern Redmond neighborhood on a relatively large city lot with a HOA and associated letters reminding us to regularly mow, water and weed our lawn, paint our fence the appropriate color and…..God forbid…keep the garbage cans out of public view. This living arraingement is foreign to us and akward. The house is fine but the property lacks privacy and storage. Last spring we spent a lot of time landscaping our back yard in Redmond.
We learned a lot and hope to apply those skills on a future property.
In February 2016 we bought new mountain bikes and immediately took them to Arizona and Utah for a month with a side trip to Death Valley to check out the super bloom.
300 trail miles later we returned to Central Oregon and got into a routine of riding 12-20 miles/day, 4-6 days/week.
Since February we have ridden over 1700 trail miles. Our skills have improved, our injuries from falls are healing and weight loss has accompanied the exercise (more weight loss could occur if beer consumption decreases!) Speaking of beer, Ron took a break from regular brewing because the Redmond house lacks space. Thus, the 2016 brewing season was limited to one coastal visit that resulted in 20 gallons of IPA, an order of magnitude less than what was brewed back in the day! In 2016 Rilea was a lucky Rogue River Lottery winner for the second year in a row so in August we spent 5 wonderful days rafting on it.
In addition to river and bike riding trips we have done a fair amount of exploring and hiking in Central Oregon. Although there are quite a few people there are thousands of miles of trails and many wonderful places to explore. Most are named but one, which used to be remote and obscure, has been named Noname Lake in guidebooks and is one of the most popular day hiking destinations in the Three Sisters Wilderness area.
We recently took a trip to New England. The fall color was spectacular and visiting relatives and re-connecting with old friends was awesome.
We apologiuze for being so long winded but our lives have been busier than ever and there is no postage or printing fee so … why not?
More details regarding our east coast trip, future property purchase and miscellaneous ramblings are published in our blog beginning with our New England trip: New England: Maine, Rhode Island & Massachuttes New England: Maine, Rhode Island & Massachuttes Future blogs regarding our home construction project and future explorations will be periodically posted if you are interested in following our adventures.
If you want to contact us here are our phone numbers and email addresses:
Ron: 541.698.8040 rsonnevil@gmail.com
Dorothy: 541.698.8044 dotdut2@gmail.com
Our physical address through 2017 is: 4466 SW Umatilla Avenue Redmond, Oregon 97756 but we hope it changes to 4853 SW Loma Linda Drive, Redmond OR 97756 on 1/1/18!!
We will be in the path of the total eclipse so please join us to celebrate it on 8/21/2017.
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ronsonn 
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