Trip to Portland

As the fine readers of this blog know, we recently took a vacation. Hawaii? No. Europe? Naw. South America? Nope. We went to a most unsuspecting, discrete location. A place to certainly rival even the most exotic locale across the globe. None other than: Portland, OR.

Yes, we did find ourselves questioning why we would spend a vacations worth of money going "home" as opposed to anyplace else. But we knew it would be worth it, we owed it to the boys to get them back together with their friends, and we knew that the little jaunt to the Northern California coast would be heaven.

Seeing as this post has nearly double the amount of pictures any other post has ever had on this blog, I'm sure I'll be working it all night. And it promises to keep you reading for a while, for better or for worse. So let's get to it!


Leaving our building, the boys are strapped with their messenger bags as carry ons, and their suitcases. We left with 8 bags, we'd come back with 11. Ugh. BUT -- isn't it the sign of any good vacation when you come back with significantly more than you left with?

Miles, patiently waiting in the airport:


Andrew, seriously discussing our flight arrangements with the attendant:


Now, this is when I have to apologize. Because somehow, the fact that our flight in Newark got delayed an hour didn't get captured by photos. The fact that they finally boarded our plane, only to sit on the tarmac for four hours didn't get captured. No pictures were taken of the fact that after 4 hours of waiting on the plane, our pilot decided to turn the mug around and pull us back into the gate. Additionally, no pics of the fact that our pilot told us that despite the fact that we had nearly no food, no beverages, no ice, hardly any water, he still wanted to get the plane to Salt Lake City so we could "stay onboard" if we wanted to and finally get to Salt Lake, our connection city. Somehow, we missed taking pictures of the fact that we didn't make our connection in Salt Lake (obviously) and got to stay in a hotel for 2 hours that night, courtesy of Delta, before we had to get back to the airport, didn't get seats on the first flight out to Portland that next day, and finally made it on seats to Portland later that day (after 1.5 hours delay due to mechanical failures in the arriving plane).

So, sorry for that.

We finally made it to Portland to find out that our rental car company had given away our car because of the delays (even though we called them three times to make sure everything was still good), that our hotel jacked the price up by $10 a day because we didn't stay the first night, and, after all that, were "turned away" by our hotel because we were an hour before checkin and they had no rooms available for us. ARGHH!!

But after that great adventure, we finally dropped our bags into our two-room suite in Embassy Suites in Downtown Portland, nearly 18 hours later than anticipated, and breathed a sigh of relief. Let the vacationing begin!

But not the pictures. Because you see, even though we spent the next four days visiting with our best friends, hanging out in our old hang outs, and seeing the boys play with friends they have been talking to every day on the phone for months, somehow those "routine" things just seemed to comfortable and refreshing we never really thought to capture them on the camera. So while we kind of regret not having pictures of the great times we had with our friends, somehow it just would have been awkward acting so tourist around our friends. Plus, the fact that I'm sharing nearly 50 pictures of about 3 days of trip to you, you're probably glad we didn't take pictures at that rate for the other nine days!!

Kris did capture this picture of the boys at a Max station:



SO -- we spent 4 days in Portland, then split. Damion stayed in PDX with his great friend Adrien, and Kristal, Miles, and I left town and drove down to Redding, CA to visit my family. So Monday, we drive the 7 hours down south. It was a fine drive, everytime we take a road trip like this it blows my mind how well Miles (and Damion) travel. The road trip was no big deal at all. We arrived, and had arranged to have a dinner at my parents house with some of my family. We had a great time visiting Mark and Tracy, Sandy and Doug, Kate, Eric, Cassie, my Grandpa Art, Barbara, and of course, my mom, dad, Betsy, and Pete. We swam in the pool, had great BBQ, and enjoyed visiting with everybody!

The next day, (and honestly, the part Kristal and I were really looking forward to!) Kristal and I drove 299 West to the coast. After suffering through a grueling 150 miles of curvy, mountain road, we made it to our hotel:





Our "room" consisted of nearly the entire bottom floor, including a large entryway, sitting room, bedroom, and bathroom, all in a classic style of rich wood, old-world furnishings, hardwood floors; oh, and ear-plugs because the floor above us and the walls were paper-thin. Oh well, it was still an amazing surprise for us, seeing as we figured this would just be a "room":

Our sitting room, which I think we spent about 10 minutes in:


The rest of the place:





Eureka, CA is a crappy coastal town with a couple things going for it that really draw tourists like us. One, Lost Coast Brewery, a great, staple Northern CA micro brewery. The other is the charming Victorian architecture of some of the buildings and the quaint "Old Town" of antique stores, used bookstores, shoe shops, and decent coffee.

This is the famous Carson Mansion -- perhaps the most iconic representation of this victorian style:




But here's another, some office building:


And us:


The next morning, we went to the Samoa Cookhouse for breakfast. This is an old logging house and does a logging camp style all-you-can-eat breakfast of the basics: decent coffee, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and potatoes. They also have a "daily special" which we were lucky enough to score biscuits and gravy. Samoa Cookhouse also has a logging museum. As I told the general manager that morning, the greatest thing about the place is that I hadn't been there in about 20 years, and it's just the same as I remember!

I remember hassling my dad about getting me a pair of corked "logging boots" like these when I was a kid. Still think it would be pretty cool to rock those... :-)




Moving right along:



We manage to spot some Elk:


Counting in there, I think there were at least 15 of them in this field!

We then drove another 45 minutes north, through the Redwood National Forest until we reached our destination, Trees of Mystery. This is an awesome, almost indescribable, better-than-roadside-attraction, "park" that takes you through a tour of weird tree formations, huge trees, and weird chainsaw carvings. It's nearly impossible to describe, but so very cool. Hopefully these pics help:

Here's the entrance parking lot with a gigantic Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.



Just like I remember, 20 years ago at least, they still have a guy that "speaks" through the Paul Bunyon at people in the parking lot. There must be a camera or something, and he's hooked up to a mic and talks to you as you enter and exit the park. Sounds weird, it IS weird. But hey, this is a better-than-roadside-attraction.


Me climbing through a "hole" in the root system of a huge redwood:


Yes, that really says that:


Couple pics of Kris in front of crazy Trees of Mystery:



I told Kris if she took another "say cheese" type picture of me, I was going to strike a pose just for the camera. So I did. In front of a ginormous Redwood:


Few other shots:






We then took a gondola up the side of the mountain, above the redwoods, with an amazing view:





What can I say, we were having a great time...


Few more shots:





We then hiked the "advanced" hike down the mountain we had just ridden up:





Yes, by this time, I was pretty tired of the pics.

So we went shopping. :-) Kris found some great shoes:




And so Kristal donned her shoes for dinner, and we ate an incredible 6 course meal at the award-winning restaurant in our Inn. Boasting one of the largest wine cellars in the nation (over 3800 vintages, several thousand more bottles), it was a real treat (and a real pain on the wallet) to eat there. Overall, however, it's nice to spend 2.5 hours over dinner sometimes -- without kids. :-)

We also hiked some trails by the Trinidad coast, eventually making it to the beach. We rolled our blanket out, settled in to relax, and realized that we don't "do" relaxing on the beach. We do playing in the ocean, making sand creations, digging. Playing "get as close to the ocean as possible but don't let it get you!" with the boys, and collecting rocks. So we lasted about 15 minutes on the blanket:


And pretty much called it good. Not before grabbing this though...


Because, after all, we were having a great time.

On the way back to Redding, we hit a highlight for me, the Bigfoot Museum in Willow Creek, CA. Having had an armchair interest in Bigfoot for, oh, all my life, I was absolutely insistent that we stop here. I chatted with the old lady running the place and got her views of why the Bigfoot in the Patterson Video is real, some of the local Bigfoot spots, and actually scored an invite to join their board of directors of the Bigfoot Museum when we move back from Jersey.



Kristal compared to a Bigfoot print:


Pic says it all, got a pic of the actual cast made by Titmus at the site of the Patterson video. Pretty sweet.


And of course, the epic shot of Bigfoot from the Patterson video:


So, with that, Kris and I returned back to Redding. And we picked up Miles, and cruised back up to Portland where we enjoyed a BBQ with our great friends Chad and Kimberly, and spent the last night in Portland in a hotel by the airport (prepped for a 6am flight). No pics of that. :-)

All in all, we couldn't have picked a better place for our summer vacation. Kinda makes us ready to go back home. :-)