The Mahaney Family: The Great Watermelon Boondoggle

This morning we picked Garrett up early and headed south with Boise on our mind. The kids were so great. The morning was quiet with drawing, coloring, and lots of movie watching. It was really nice to have our whole family together and away from home. The traffic was light and before we knew it we were in SW Washington enjoying the arid scenery.

Just before lunch, we crossed back into Oregon (out east) and noticed Hermiston, OR (AKA Watermelon Mecca) was the first city we came upon. Our kids love watermelon... in a way that exceeds normal admiration of a seasonal fruit. Our dog even loves watermelon. So we decided to detour (about 10 miles round trip) to Hermiston to eat lunch and capture a fresh Hermiston watermelon. We also needed fuel. We got to Hermiston's business district, found food, and gas quickly and set about the task of finding our prized melon. Not having seen any or any mention of them in town (although we did notice the proud display of watermelon on the water tower), I suggested we detour to Safeway. "Surely, they are selling them. They are selling them in our Safeway in Portland." Hum, well I didn't dig through the pile of very green melons, but I immediately noticed they were from a farm in (*GASP*) Cal-i-forn-i-ah (read in Governator voice)!! I left Safeway dismayed. (You may have noticed my Facebook comment) We drove out of Hermiston broken-hearted and the watermelon water tower chuckled at us as we passed.

We were disappoint to say the least but then just out of town what to our wondering eyes should appear but a farm stand with... YOU GUESSED IT! Beautiful, round, delicious Hermiston watermelons! I chose a fairly large one... 22 lbs to be exact. The women charged me $9.04 (which I figure works out to about $0.18/pound). Tom thought this was a little large.