Oregon

We had a great trip to Oregon.  I have never posted photos on the blog, but I am going to try to get some here from the trip.  My camera is just a little Canon point and shoot with a 4x zoom, so the quality is nowhere near that of most of the other blogs that I visit.  I will do my best with what I have. My apologies.

We started in Eugene, where our daughter and her S.O. both graduated from the university.  She received her M.A., he a PhD.  They were very happy!

We spent a few days in Eugene.  It is a town that made me think of the dad in that show “Family Ties”- kind of shabby but smart and cool.  It is the quintessential university town.  My daughter and Dr. S.O. both love it there. We ate in a couple of very unique restaurants, both in renovated homes, both with excellent food.  One of these was Cornucopia, the other Stage One, or something close to that-I am not sure. We loved the microbrews, and tried a new one regularly! 

The first thing on the list of things to see was the Sea Lion Caves.  I don’t know why, but it just fascinated me.  It was one of  three places I definitely wanted to see.  So, we drove out to Florence, on the coast.  Believe me, you can smell the sea lions before you see them, and it is a bit of a tourist trap, but I loved it.  You walk part way down the hill and then take an elevator down to the cave.  The elevator opens up in the cave.  The sea lions are in the cave, resting, fighting, and ummmm-making some new sea lions.  It was pretty dark, but I tried to get a picture in the cave.  Perhaps you can make out the sea lions on the rock.  If not, well, pretend that this is just a picture of a black hole!

From the inside of the cave, there was a view out to the ocean, and a small lighthouse on the cliffs in the distance.

There were also sea lions sunning themselves on rocks at the opposite side of the sea cave.  They look a little bit like worms down there, but there were a lot of babies with parents just catching some rays and getting the little ones some practice in the water.

We drove along the coast for quite some time, stopping often to see the beautiful scenery. It was spectacular, and reminded me a lot of the northern coast of Ireland.

Over the next several days, we visited many areas of Oregon.  We saw the desert plains area of Bend, which was beautiful in a totally different way.  It was dry, but sunny after the overcast days that we had most of the time along the coast. We visited Smith Rock State Park, which is a huge rock outcrop overlooking a river gorge below.  There are trails that go down into the river area, but I stayed above and enjoyed the chance to read and relax while my husband and daughter hiked down, and our son went running along the roads of the park.

Over the course of our visit, we stayed with relatives in Portland.  We saw the sights there with my husband’s cousin.  We visited the Pittock Mansion,

where a young couple was having wedding photos taken on the grounds. the mansion is on a hill above the entire valley.  The view of the city of Portland is wonderful.

We also drove “the loop”, following the Columbia River through the orchards of Hood River, and stopped to see the Multnomah Falls.

To get a sense of the scale, that is a bridge  in the middle of the photo.   There are people on the bridge.  The water at the top drops into a pool, then there is a second falls under the bridge.

And, of course, we visited the Portland Rose Garden.  I really wanted to see this, as well.  I loved the roses, even though it has been a tough year for the roses, and apparently they are not doing as well as normal.  I wouldn’t have known there was a problem.  These are a few of the roses I particularly liked.

The pink one on the bottom is a McCartney, and the purple (blue) is a Rhapsody in Blue.  I think the purples were the most amazing to me.  We don’t see these where I live!

From flowers to snow. Another item on my list to see was Mt. Hood.  Now, if the weather had been clear, we would have seen the mountain from afar throughout our visit. When we flew in from Seattle, we saw Mt. Ranier, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood all in a row as we followed the line to Portland. Now that was spectacular!  However, it was overcast most of the time we were in Oregon.  When we did visit the mountain, it was socked in with fog/clouds.  There is still skiing, and there was snow piled high at the lodge.

All in all, I loved the variety and the beauty of Oregon. The people were friendly.  I would think that it might be easy to be crabby in the gray overcast weather, but it didn’t seem that way.  I have also heard that Oregonians do not appreciate tourists or newcomers who they see as sullying the natural beauty of their state.  We did not run into anything along those lines. 

There was one item on my list that we didn’t get to, Crater Lake National Park.  It was still snowed in, and there were only limited services available so early in the season.  That is on the list for next time.

We’ll be back!

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