Greenie Times: Visit to Oregon

Since it's over 100 degrees today here in Albuquerque, I thought I'd stay inside in the cool A/C, catch up on some laundry and housework, and get a few blogs posted...

The Greenies took a trip up to Oregon for the long Memorial Day weekend and took a zillion photos to capture the memories. (And I've generously reduced the file size of all of these photos to get them up on the blog, but you can click on each one to make it bigger and/or email me to get a full-size version.) I lived up in the Portland area for about 9 months back in, oh, 2003, and I've wanted to take Matt there for a LONG, LONG time. So we did a whirl-wind 4-day tour of all of the things-Kerrie-loves about Oregon and now I'm sharing the love with you, dear reader!

Let's start with the flight out to Portland... Tried to time our flights so that they'd match up with Carter's nap schedule. On the way out, he slept pretty much the entire 3 hours from Albuquerque on Matt's chest:

The way back...not so much sleeping. Carter played with the tray tables, the arm rests, the window shades, and pretty much everything else available to a toddler on an airplane... Must say that the ear tubes sure made flying easy for us, as he's now naturally equalized with the tubes and has no problems with pressure on take off and landing. Yay for all of us!

First stop on our trip was a visit to Powell's Books (the largest independent book store in the US). You see, I nearly pee my pants each time I get to walk into Powell's. It's like my own slice of heaven! The building takes up an entire city block in downtown Portland and they have pretty much every type of book, new and used, that you can imagine. I didn't take these next two photos (thank you, internet...), but here's my vision of heaven looks like:

And we also managed to hit Powell's up EVERY DAY of the trip, so I think I've purchased enough books now to keep me reading for the rest of my life... :)

We then traveled up to Beaverton (just west of Portland) to visit some 'ol Albuquerque pals, Tim and Martha. We had a lovely dinner (thanks guys!) at the Old Spaghetti Factory (why oh why can't we get one in New Mexico?!). We sure miss having Tim and Martha around here! They're such good people!!

Here' s shot of me, Martha, and their two daughters, Grace and Claire (Claire is just 4 days older than Carter):

And Matt, Tim, Carter, and Claire:

We went to their new home (wowzer, it's beautiful!!) afterward and had some good times. It's a shame we couldn't stay longer, but Carter was turning into quite a crankapotamus, so we had to get back to the hotel. Hopefully they'll make a trip out to Albuquerque someday and we can treat them to dinner!

Moving on...

On Saturday, we took a trip down to the Portland Saturday Market - it's an outdoor arts, crafts, photography, clothing, photography, etc. market right along the Willamette River front.
We took the lightrail train downtown so that we didn't have to drive the rental car and find parking. Carter had a good time on the train and made enough noise for everyone to hear!

Few shots from the Market:

We stopped for lunch at Kell's (one of my favorite Irish pubs) and filled up our bellies before our next adventure. Yummm...Guinness!

After lunch, we drove down to the Columbia River Gorge (about 30 miles east of Portland) and visited the waterfalls. Since I've seen them numerous times with other friends and family, I hung with Carter (who was napping) in the car and Matt wondered around Horsetail Falls and captured these beautiful photos:

Right up the road from Horsetail Falls is the world-famous Multnomah Falls. Perhaps one of the most beautiful waterfalls in all of the US, we definitely had to stop and hike up to the bridge to see it up close. And by this time, Carter was back awake and got to see his very first waterfall!

Matt had the camera on some weird photo setting that enhanced the greens, grayed out the rest, and had this odd sepia look about it. Here're a couple shots on the weird setting:

Here's that same shot with the correct camera settings:

Next are a few more photos of Multnomah Falls (and this is 2 of the 3 falls that are all considered part ot Multnomah - I've hiked up to the top in the past and have seen the 1st fall - gorgeous!):

Looking the opposite direction out to the other tourists:

Here's a shot of a huge boulder that came down from the falls in the 1996 - it made an 80 foot splash when it fell. It's about the size of a bus (400 tons), but is dwarfed now by the gush of water:

And somewhere along the way on Day 1 we lost Carter's jacket. Whoopsie! So here he is in the closest size we could find at Target during the off-seaon - hehehe:

A little further up the road (traveling back west toward Portland), we stopped at the "Crown" along the Columbia River Gorge. Carter was certainly glad to be out of the carseat and stretched his legs by our parking spot (love all the moss that grows on everything):

Atop the Crown, you can literally look down the Columbia River (both east and west) and even look across the river and see Washington state. Here are a few shots of the view:

And a funny story from a previous visit to the Crown with my folks - My mom, dad, and I visited it once when the winds were nearly 80 mph at the top. My dad had to hang onto the binocular-thingy (behind me in the next photo) just so he wouldn't blow off the sidewalk! Hilarious! Needless to say, it wasn't quite as windy when the Greenies were there (and also not quite as sunny as when my folks visited...):

Few more views from the top:

Next to the visitor's center is a little grassy area that people can stop and sit for a picnic. We let Carter run around a bit before we strapped him back into the car for the trip back to Portland. Let's just say that the boy loves playing in the grass!