WHY do we visit only once every 5 years or so?
Money.
If money were no object, we would visit every year and choose a different season each time.
This is the view from my SiL's home on the Oregon coast. She and her husband have lived here almost 20 years and we have visited them only 3? times. Every time I swear we need to stay longer or come more often. They are wonderful, congenial hosts and always give us a great time. However, I agree that after 3 days, fish and guest become less welcome, so we keep our visits short. In any case, it is a squeeze to fit even 3 days into everyone's schedule! We were away from home for 5 days, but even with air travel (and one overnight flight) we took two days to get there and back!
First, some travel photos, because they are interesting to me.
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This was takein at our Departure airport, which is a 3.5 hour drive from home. We made it, together, early and are still smiling! THAT is something!
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| Mt. Hood from the airplane. How could I not include that photo? |
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Going over the River at dusk.
Shows that we arrived and actually got to our hotel before it was totally dark!
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We stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn out in Beaverton as advised. Portland has so many homeless people that are unfortunaltely not safe to be around that no place is really safe, daytime or night. We were not impressed with this Hilton, especially the huge crack in the bathroom ceiling!
Friday dawned rainy, as is quite usual for Portland, OR. Knowing this was most likely, we kept our options open for the day and decided that after a good breakfast, we would visit a local historic home, the Pittock Mansion.
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| We had a really good breakfast at local chain, Biscuit Cafe. |
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| Jim, at what was originally the front entrance drive. |
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| This was the back entrance, leading to the garage and tennis courts. It is now the main entry for the visitors. I'm showing the size of a red penstemen. Plants really GROW out here! |
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Dinner with our family. It was delicious.
Oswego Grill in Beaverton, OR |
Saturday we met up with family and visited the Farmer's Market at Portland State University. I could not believe how much fresh local produce was available already. They have a very different growing season from ours! After collecting a basket of goodies, we packed up and drove out to SiL and BiL's home on the coast, a little over an hour away.
Cue gorgeous photos:
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| They live up a BIG hill...on the side of a mountain, really. The drive up and down is hair-raising! |
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Since it was not currently raining, we made it down to the beach and had a nice walk.
I did NOT get my feet wet, it was too cold! |
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| Not a flattering photo, but it does show the size of the rocks that the jetty is made of! |
Sunday was less rainy so we took a hike through a local Preserve. It was about a mile down to the Bay (and then a mile back) but it was an easy walk on a level path. Pretty birch trees, a huge slug, and the requisite photo.
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| Show me that camoflaged birch tree, Honey! |
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| Huge slug! |
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| A rest at the Bay. Lots of driftwood and some put to good use building a fort by local kids. |
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On the way back, the clouds coming down the mountians.
I always think that looks so interesting! |
Monday was our last day, but we still had lots of time as our flight left at midnight on Tuesday am!
It was a lovely day with blue skies and warmer temps - it got up to 63!
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| The guys, visiting. They stayed out in the courtyard so long that they got sunburned! |
OK now I can't resist posting more photos of the view out the windows of their home. They designed these north facing windows in a bay on the slope side of their house. Top level is the library, middle level is a sitting room with a window seat and some more book shelves, and the lowest level is the guest bedroom.
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| Upper level Library |
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| Out the Sitting Room window, main level. |
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Out the Sitting Room looking to the Mountains.
Same window, just look left for Ocean, right for Mountains! |
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| The lowest level, looking out the guest room window. |
We left their home after a delicious dinner, about 6:15pm. We wanted to miss traffic in Portland, but still get to the airport before dark and in plenty of time to fuel up and return our rental car. We ended up being about 3 hours early for the flight. We got a bit nervous as the airline was asking passengers to give up their seats for a later flight. We just did not have it in us to sleep (?) in the airport all night and take a flight 12 hours later! As it turned out, sleep was elusive and would not be restful, anyway. The flight back to Minneapolis was less that 3 hours (local time was 5:30 am)! We arrived so groggy that we had trouble navigating the airport and finding our car... but we managed. Note to self: DO NOT plan to park in the airport lot ever again! $148.00! Then a 4 hour drive home, but we got back at 10:30 AM. We spent the day napping...
And I'm still recovering, 4 days later....
Missed the grandkids. Here is (are) my token photo(s). We had Baby Girl for a few hours on Friday morning so her Mommy could run errands.
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| Gampa, hep me choo choo.... |
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| She likes flowers |
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| Good of me, but she was watching something down the street. |
And so... We are back to some days bloomin' HOT and other days, not so bad. Today is not so bad so I had better get busy doing SOMETHING! I think I'll sew.
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