I received an invite from Jan Oden, our oldtime friend in Oregon to go look for some petrified rock. That's one of the reasons I made the trip up there. We found a fee-for-rock hunting place up the valley from Sweet Home. Ten thousand years ago, an ice-age flood washed the petrified rock down the valley from the mountains. The owner had quite a collection of petrified wood laying out behind his barn, and had also dug a trench with a backhoe. I picked up a nice section of tree-trunk with annual rings on it. I left it at Carrie's because it was too heavy to get back on the plane. Someday I might get it back to Albuquerque or to whereever we might retire.



Jan, now 77 lives in Albany in a Mennonite housing complex. After a series of cats, her newest pet is Buddy Beaver - named after the Oregon State U. mascot (Bud for short), a very fluffy small dog who can travel all day in a pet crate in the back of her SUV without a whimper. Excepting her recovery from a partial new knee operation, Jan is as active as ever with the same temperament as she had 35 years ago when I first met her. She and her son own a 200 acre farm outside of Albany which was her father's where she grew up.