6 10 - 15 ON TO SUSANVILLE, CA

We had a wonderful time at David and Heather and Autumn and Amber's. So we left Sparks with heavy hearts. We also left without one of our bags. David tried to catch us on the cellphone. We had trouble hearing him, so we tried calling him back while he was trying to call us back. You know how that goes, both of us going directly to voicemail. We turned around while David was following us trying to catch up. Very funny situation. So, with all of our stuff we headed off toward our next destination.

We drove to Susanville, where we could have a nice room for a couple of nites and Arleen could have something to do that would not include Duane, ie gambling. Yes, we stay at casino hotels whenever possible because, usually, the rooms are nice and cheap. So we stopped in Susanville. We really liked it there and spent a couple of extra days there. We played golf and went to "bear dance". A bear dance is the celebration of spring, the emergence of the bear and the beginning of a new year. We got to dance with both tribal and non-tribal members. There we 5 concentric circles with the smallest made up of the smallest children, and older as you went outward. We danced around the circles while the bear walked around and we petted him with our stalks of plants. You do this to make nice to the bear so that during the coming year he will not harm you.

So today, the 15th, more rested, we left Susanville and drove back to Oregon and Lakeview, where we will look for sunstone tomorrow. More about that then.