Portland & The Wedding

After we recovered from a crazy day of hiking (my poor knee!!!), we headed to downtown Portland to explore. We ate at a place called Mother's Bistro as recommended by TripAdvisor and it did not disappoint. The biscuits there were the best things I've ever tasted. Amazing.

Our dinner spot- YUM! 

Hilarious shirts for sale.

Excited for dinner! Chicken friend chicken- he even
tried the kale!

Meatloaf! 

Iconic sign

It turns out that Portland had a beer festival that day and had a lot of drunk, wild people around so we cut our exploration of the city a little short and headed for the hotel for the evening. We were ready for bed anyway!

Since Jackson just got to town and had not yet had Elmer's I went again. Poor me. ;) The skillet was just as good as it had been a couple of days ago and their coffee is amazing!

Delicious brunch!

After a mad dash to get a wedding card and present (we'd somehow forgotten to do that and the wedding was the whole reason for the trip), we made it to the ceremony with time to spare. Whew!

Grace, Kathy, Susan, Jackson and I with Mt. Hood in the background

The wedding was lovely. I laughed. I cried. This should surprise no one. The food was delicious as was the cake! Jackson and I decided to sneak out a little early to get closer to Mt. Hood before the sun went down.

The view from the Government Center stop near Mt. Hood

It was a gorgeous drive and we had fun exploring the little ski towns.

Petefish

After the big day of exploration and nuptials we were exhausted and called it a night pretty early. Man, we are getting old! ;)

Eugene & Lost Lake

We ate breakfast at a West Coast gem called Elmer's before hitting the road for Portland. I made us stop in Eugene to see the University of Oregon's campus which turned out to be a real snore. BOO!

Eugene uses a middle of the road parking technique

We got to our hotel in Portland finally after gnarly traffic and a snafu with my navigator putting in directions to the wrong hotel. *ahem* We took a little break, got cleaned up and then headed over to the Bride and Groom's house for dinner. It was SO fun to see everyone and laugh with the groom's hilarious extended family.

The groom trying on his "wedding gifts"
HA!!

The evening went quickly because I was having so much fun and before I knew it was time to pick Jackson up from the airport. REUNITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was SO happy to see his pretty face that I just stared at him for a good 3 minutes when we went to grab him some dinner after his long, delayed, cross-country flights. I love that man!

He didn't want to miss out on all the fun of exploring Oregon so we used Friday as a catch-up day for him. We drove out towards Mt. Hood to an area called Lost Lake to do some hiking.

We found Lost Lake- HaHa!

The view of  Mt. Hood from the lakeside trail

Jackson and Susan climbing around

Mt. Hood is amazingly beautiful

Petefish.

Petefish.

A gorgeous trail

Easy hiking!

Likely waiting on Susan- ha!!

We loved the clear water

From Lost Lake we headed to see the famous waterfalls, but first stopped for lunch.

Roadside burger stand (East Wind Drive-In)
aka this town's Ivanhoe's

The malt at this place was amazing. It rivaled the one from Marion's drive-in, Myer's, which is just hard to do. (My Mom used to get us malts from there when we visited her at work at the license branch many moons ago and they still taste that good today!)

Treating herself

Multnomah  Falls

Anyway, we did a morning hike and had lunch and then went to see waterfalls. I heard nothing about climbing them. I was wrong. We climbed them.

542 feet of waterfall 

Mid-way up views

Down the falls.

STRAIGHT DOWN
View from the top

Jackson being an idiot at the top
note: there was a railing there

The smaller feeder fall

Proof of Darwinism 

Tired and Proud at the top

Looking out at the Columbia River

Petefish at the top

Pretending to take a post-hike shower on the
way down

One more view of how high we climbed

I can honestly say that was the hardest hike of my life. I was so glad when it was over. If possible, the way down felt worse and more unending than the climb itself!

I'm glad to be back and resting before we head out for the evening!

Bandon to Boardman to Grants Pass

Other than an amazing Italian restaurant, there was not a ton in Bandon. It is now home to a famous golf course, but we weren't aware of that until we'd left town- ha! We left our hotel (the only non- Holiday Inn Express that we stayed in the entire trip simply because there was not one nearby!) without breakfast because theirs was lame. We thought we'd see something along the way to our morning's hike. We were wrong. I made a 71.5 year old woman hike over 3 miles without feeding her!!! Whoops! Ok, fine, I did give her a Kind bar so she wasn't just starved! 

I kept seeing posts about Samuel Boardman State Park on Instagram and it did not disappoint. It is right along the 101 and just amazing.

Arch Rock

Samuel H. Boardman State Park is GORGEOUS

No words.

Susan ready to hike

The steep drop off

A walk through the woods...

The view

A clearing

Finishing the last climb

Feeling victorious after a 3 mile hike

We intended to do a further hike, but the trail got really steep and jagged and we didn't want to risk injury so we turned back. I also think we might have been hungry and we hadn't seen a single other hiker which was both cool and a little worrisome -ha!

We finished visiting the 12 mile park by pulling off at each viewing point and walking around. It was a beautiful day!

Whale Rock

Room for Jackson in this selfie
:(

One of the pull-offs had beach access so we helped ourselves!

Beach walk

Such a pretty beach

After all of that I did finally feed Susan. McDonald's. True. Story.

From there we followed the 101 to the California state line. We decided to explore the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in Crescent City, CA since our morning hike was cut short. If you're a loyal blog reader you know that I love trees. You also know that we've seen giant sequoia trees so I thought my days of being impressed by a tree's size were over. I was wrong! In case you wanted to know the difference between the two kinds of trees it comes down to this: the giant sequoia is the largest tree in the world in volume and has an immense trunk with very slight taper; the redwood is the world's tallest tree and has a slender trunk. Now you know.

REDWOODS

Susan taking a quick break

Did it make a sound when it fell?!

A LARGE log

Susan dwarfed by the tree!

We left the woods and headed back into Oregon to go North this time to make our way to Portland for the wedding. We drove through the mountains with the windows down letting the 102 degree air whip us around like clothes in a drier. It was awesome!

View from the room--not bad!

We stayed for the evening in Grants Pass, OR. We had a nice view of the Cascade Mountains from our room.

Smelling her wine

Oregon is actually known for its wine (you know, like Northern California since they're neighbors and all) so Susan wanted to try some out. Good thing she had a DD available!

Bread and water for me

The wine bar we went to was so fancy that I couldn't find anything on their menu to eat. True story. Susan tasted her pinot noir wine flight, bought a bottle and we headed out for Mexican food. Win!