Well, it was just an idea I had one morning, I’d take Chris and her horse crazy granddaughter to the Omak stampede. Unfortunately, the granddaughter couldn’t go with us.
We listened to cousin Kathy Peterson’s band, Loose Change, visited with cousins, (a lot more cousins than I expected!)

and got to see, draw and pet horses! The horses were mostly roping and barrel racing horses, and were quietly waiting their turn to perform later in the arena. (horse sketches are actual size)

Kathy’s band played gospel music with a mountain twang, and made beautiful harmonies with each other. It was incredibly hot there in Omak, and we sauntered around from shadow to shadow.
The day after the concert and our time at the stampede, we all hung out at Kathy’s motor home park in Twisp, with a pleasant view across the river. Then we had an excellent dinner of Rod’s ribs, Ellen’s potato salad, corn on the cob and lots of fresh vegetables and watermelon! We all got a good cousin dose, some of which Chris had not seen in 50 years. Eventually I realized that without Gerald, we would not have had a joker in the mix. I was missing Donald, who also told bad jokes, and I think some of us were missing Uncle Dan a lot too, his jokes were also famously bad.

Oh sorry, to those of you that don’t know, my reference to Roaches is that this branch of the family’s last name is Roach. Dan and Dorothy Roach had 5 kids, 4 of which were at our little gathering, as well as Dorothy!