Thanksgiving Trip #1

We've been gone for 5 days and 4 nights. We went to Eugene to celebrate Thanksgiving with Ben's Mom and Dad, sisters and grandma. We left Thursday am and got home today at 3.10pm. I have a Kirkland large trash bag full of dirty clothes waiting for me as I post:) Really the only draw backs were the lack of being home, forgetting the camera (insert crying noise here) and the long drive (it took 2 hours to get to Eugene and 3.5 hours to get to Medford from Eugene. Totaling 5.5 hours back in one day).
Okay, so we got to Eugene and ate our bellies full to overflowing. So much so that I convinced Ben to take a walk after the game.
Now, Grandma lives up on a hill. We wanted to walk pretty aggressively, so we were thinking it would take at least a whole hour to get back to the house. Seems simple, right? Walk away from the house for a 1/2 hour then walk back to the house and the total time should be an hour. This is not what happened.
We started our walk and immediately get into some deep topics. Family stuff, training the kids, $$$, what-r-we-gonna-do-with-our-growing-family type talking. We were also admiring the newly constructed homes in Granny's neighborhood. We walk up a hill and down another.....and down another.....and another....and another, until we are walking down a double lined street with apartments. We didn't know that there were apartments near G's house. Hum. Our solution? Keep walking! We know we need to find a street that goes to the right....all the streets that go that direction are dead ends. That really should have been a clue. By now we've been walking for 45 min. We ask each other if we should go back....no, we reason, there has to be a road that eventually turns to the right.....right? WRONG!
We end up in a neighborhood that sounds close to a major street (sadly this encouraged us) when we come to another couple walking. At this point the sun has set; it's cold. My feet and fingers are numb and we've been walking for 1 hour 15 min. I ask this couple if we're close to Chambers or McLean. By the look on their faces and the fact they didn't know there were any streets in Eugene with these names, we started to get worried. Did I mention we didn't have our: wallets, cell phones or $. And we realise we don't have Grandmas or Mom's phone number memorised, the numbers are in our phones. We're sunk.
Fortunately this nice couple offered to drive us up the hill to G's. It takes 15 min. to drive there but we arrive before they call the police. Need I say we didn't take another walk while we were there?!? Thanks for the ride Doug and Sheryl!
The next day we drove the way we walked to see how far we walked....over 3 miles.
I'll post about the rest of our trip later! Boy, is it good to be home.