We decided to take a fun trip for our
30th wedding anniversary.
My brother Scott lives/lived in Portland, Oregon,
so that is where we chose to go.
Plus I have wanted to visit the Oregon coast for years.
We flew into PDX and rented a car
and headed to the Columbia River Gorge.
And I had to take pictures of the trees with
moss growing on them before anything else!
I only hiked about 1/2 way to the top
but Mark made it the whole way.
And I couldn't get enough of the lush foliage.
This is a view from the hike looking at the Columbia River.
Some nice strangers took our picture for us.
As you will see later on in this post
Then we headed to Washington!
Well just across a bridge to go to Skamania Lodge.
Where I started my seafood journey!
This salad was so, so good!
Then we headed to Vista House.
The views of the gorge were stunning.
This is Vista House.
Next we headed into Portland to check in to our hotel.
When we got there Mark saw this sign.
And I had been chosen as the guest of the day
and we received an upgraded room and a gift bag.
The gift bag contained microwave popcorn,
a bottle of water, and a granola bar! Score!
Then at my brother's urging we ate dinner at Koi Fusion which
started, I think, as a food truck in Portland.
I got the rice bowl and Mark got the sliders.
Sorry if this post is mostly about food! Kinda.
I guess I never got around to taking a picture of our
upgraded room.
But the next stop on our Portland foodie journey
was Pine State Biscuits for breakfast.
Mark got a gourmet chocolate milk.
And I got biscuits and gravy with an egg on top.
Mark actually got a yummy cornmeal blueberry pancakes too
but I must have been too busy eating to take a picture.
Then we took a lunch cruise on the Willamette River
which runs right down the center of Portland.
Here is the map of our journey.
As you can see there are numerous bridges across the
Willamette that we cruised under.
One of the bridges.
Here is Mark seated at our table.
And this is our table after I spilled Mark's Coke.
From the boat we were able to see our next home and plane.
Here is one of our selfie tries.
My suntanning husband.
Me and a bunch more bridges.
Little houses along the river where I wanted to live.
So charming.
After our cruise we walked around town for a while.
And can I just say, Portland know how to do food trucks!
There were blocks of these!
We visited an amazing book store.
Where we were able to find some
Italian literature for our Paige.
Then we went to see family!
Aren posing with Mark in front of her house.
Scott and Aren took us to dinner with
our nephew Jared and his wife Nicole.
We went to Jake's Famous Crawfish.
And I tried calamari for the first time.
It was pretty good.
It was so fun to see family!
Then we hit up Salt & Straw for ice cream.
But we bought pints so we didn't have to stand in the
50 person line!
Before leaving town the next morning we
went to the Portland Oregon Temple.
Oregon is all about Sasquatch!
We found this one at Camp 18
on our way to Cannon Beach.
Terrifying!
Highway 101
First glimpse of Cannon Beach.
The Oregon coast is so beautiful!
This is our room.
So this picture and the next one
I am standing in the same spot.
I just turned around.
I just wanted to show how close we were
to the beach.
Here is our front door.
We had dinner at Pizza a'Fetta.
And watched the sun set.
The next day we went to Seaside, OR.
Lunch at The Crabby Oyster.
The best halibut fish and chips.
And Mark's burger. Really? A burger when you can get seafood?
We drove to Astoria and were amazed by this bridge
that crosses from Oregon to Washington over the Columbia river
as it goes out into the Pacific Ocean.
Seriously so pretty. (I am getting redundant!)
Mostly we spent our days driving to and walking around
beautiful little seaside towns. Or strolling on the beach
So here are some pictures
without words.
As we drove back into Portland we stopped at this
McDonalds that has the greatest salmon art(?).
We had a little time before our flight
so we went to the International Rose Test Garden.
And the Japanese Garden.
Then all of a sudden it was over
and we headed to the airport.
Sorry to end on a bad picture taken through the windshield
but I liked this view of Mout Hood.
We had such a great time visiting the Northwest!
We will definitely do it again!
