Oh Oregon!!
Why would you live in California when you could live in Oregon? Wow - what a surprise this quiet state just north of us was on our little family adventure!! Here are a few pictures and a few surprises from our trip.
Surprise #1: Teg singing a made-up song in the car en route: "We're going caaaaamping... in ooooh-rigun...we're gonna caaaamp.... and there's fishiiiiiing...."
Me: How do you know there's fishing in Oregon?
Teg: Because my map puzzle piece of Oregon has a fish on it. (resumes singing prior refrain).
Me: Oh. (?!?!??!?!?! She's THREE!!! Kids just blow me away.)
Surprise #2: Oregon was squeezing in the last of its summer road maintenance before the rainy season... which meant LOTS of construction vehicles on the road. You can just imagine our delight as our vehicle-crazy son called out the name of every one (and there were HUNDREDS) as we drove by: Digger! Scwaper! Giant (by which he means Giant excavator)! Dump twuck! Big rig! 'Mato twuck (tomato truck)! Paver! Backhoe! Backhoe! Uh-wun (another one) backhoe!!
First lunch stop: horsing around in Klamath Falls.
Next stop: camping at Crater Lake. It was bitterly cold in the mornings and our kids could not understand why everything hurt. They were even too cold to eat breakfast. After an hour of crying, this was our make-shift get-warm solution...
My loved ones on the rim of a most beautiful caldera:
Surprise #3: My kids are pretty good hikers! Teg hiked more than 2 miles, and Callum at least half the way, on this hike to Plikni Falls. And Jeremy enjoyed playing with the camera on the way....
Then on to the Newberry Volcanic Monument - here we are atop a cinder cone. Unseen in this picture is miles of lava lands stretching to the west, east and south...
Surrpise #4: Bend! What a delightful place! The most marvelous combination of outdoor rugged beauty, ponderosa pines, snow-capped mountains, lakes and waterfalls... and yet it's the high desert. Here are our munchkins entertaining themselves in (more) dirt while we set up the campsite. Those buckets, shovels and little diggers were, by far, the best things I packed for the trip.
Surprise #5 (it's worthy of its own number): Bend's parks! This one brilliant park we visited had a pirate-themed play structure, giant slides (note Callum's face-of-slide-conquering below), and a giant astro-turf hill - perfect for rolling and sliding down without the grassburn!
Our campsite alongside the Deschutes river:
Then on to eclectic, eccentric, excellent Portland! Here are my kids, riveted by the water features at the (riveting!) Portland Children's Museum:
Man + train = happy
(really, it's the same equation as boy + train....)
We also got to see Megan and Jason in Portland, but were so busy catching up we forgot to take a photo! Dang it! It was WONDERFUL to see them!
Then, on to McMinnville. My dear husband's one requested stop for our Oregon trip was to see Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" at the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. Here we are beneath the colossal wingspan of the spuce goose: seriously, it's a WATER PLANE, and it's the size of (in some dimensions bigger than) a 747....
A stop along the whisty (that's whimsical and misty) coast...
The Yaquina bridge: isn't is GORGEOUS???
Snuggling on a walk up to the wooden Yaquina lighthouse:
Unsure of how she feels so close to an octopus... but much more comfortable discovering a tortoise in Ashland's Lithia Park:
What a week! Wonderful Oregon: we'll be back!!!
Surprise #1: Teg singing a made-up song in the car en route: "We're going caaaaamping... in ooooh-rigun...we're gonna caaaamp.... and there's fishiiiiiing...."
Me: How do you know there's fishing in Oregon?
Teg: Because my map puzzle piece of Oregon has a fish on it. (resumes singing prior refrain).
Me: Oh. (?!?!??!?!?! She's THREE!!! Kids just blow me away.)
Surprise #2: Oregon was squeezing in the last of its summer road maintenance before the rainy season... which meant LOTS of construction vehicles on the road. You can just imagine our delight as our vehicle-crazy son called out the name of every one (and there were HUNDREDS) as we drove by: Digger! Scwaper! Giant (by which he means Giant excavator)! Dump twuck! Big rig! 'Mato twuck (tomato truck)! Paver! Backhoe! Backhoe! Uh-wun (another one) backhoe!!
First lunch stop: horsing around in Klamath Falls.
Next stop: camping at Crater Lake. It was bitterly cold in the mornings and our kids could not understand why everything hurt. They were even too cold to eat breakfast. After an hour of crying, this was our make-shift get-warm solution...
My loved ones on the rim of a most beautiful caldera:
Surprise #3: My kids are pretty good hikers! Teg hiked more than 2 miles, and Callum at least half the way, on this hike to Plikni Falls. And Jeremy enjoyed playing with the camera on the way....
Then on to the Newberry Volcanic Monument - here we are atop a cinder cone. Unseen in this picture is miles of lava lands stretching to the west, east and south...
Surrpise #4: Bend! What a delightful place! The most marvelous combination of outdoor rugged beauty, ponderosa pines, snow-capped mountains, lakes and waterfalls... and yet it's the high desert. Here are our munchkins entertaining themselves in (more) dirt while we set up the campsite. Those buckets, shovels and little diggers were, by far, the best things I packed for the trip.
Surprise #5 (it's worthy of its own number): Bend's parks! This one brilliant park we visited had a pirate-themed play structure, giant slides (note Callum's face-of-slide-conquering below), and a giant astro-turf hill - perfect for rolling and sliding down without the grassburn!
Our campsite alongside the Deschutes river:
Then on to eclectic, eccentric, excellent Portland! Here are my kids, riveted by the water features at the (riveting!) Portland Children's Museum:
Man + train = happy
(really, it's the same equation as boy + train....)
We also got to see Megan and Jason in Portland, but were so busy catching up we forgot to take a photo! Dang it! It was WONDERFUL to see them!
Then, on to McMinnville. My dear husband's one requested stop for our Oregon trip was to see Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" at the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. Here we are beneath the colossal wingspan of the spuce goose: seriously, it's a WATER PLANE, and it's the size of (in some dimensions bigger than) a 747....
A stop along the whisty (that's whimsical and misty) coast...
The Yaquina bridge: isn't is GORGEOUS???
Snuggling on a walk up to the wooden Yaquina lighthouse:
Unsure of how she feels so close to an octopus... but much more comfortable discovering a tortoise in Ashland's Lithia Park:
What a week! Wonderful Oregon: we'll be back!!!
posted by Bronwyn at 1:51 pm
5 Comments:
Wow! I hope you have a big space on a wall in your home because you must blow up that first picture of your loves on the edge of Crater Lake and hang it up- it is fantastic! Glad you all had a good time- sounds like your kids are good travelers. Thanks for the fun post!
So glad you experienced Lee's and my home state. LOVED the pix!
Love it, love it!!!
Looks beautiful, and so do you all! Can't believe how Callum has grown since you were here!!!!
AWESOME! At the risk of intruding on some fantastic family time... if I'd known you were going to be in Portland... I'd have tried to come down to say "HI!"
Maybe next time. :-)
LOVE LOVE LOVE the Crater Lake photos. I think I might need to plan my own next vacation there. :-)
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