Thank you, Oregon!

Hello, friends. I am finally getting back into the swing of things after our fabulous vacation. Oregon was such a beautiful place and I only wish we had more time to spend there. We spent about 3.5 days in Salem, which was such a fun city. It is quite hard to believe that is it actually a city, with its wide roads and old western charm. I thought I had forgotten my camera during that leg of our trip, and subsequently I have no pictures of my own of Salem. On Tuesday, after the rest of our family left, John, Isaiah and I drove up the down the coast to Lincoln City to visit the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

It was such an amazing experience and so different from the beaches we know here on the east coast. We were driving through mountains and suddenly the ocean appeared. No indication that we were even close. The water was soooo cold there and we even walked the beach in sweaters (well John didn't).

Tuesday night we drove up to Portland and spent two nights there. Wednesday we visited Multnomah and Wahkeena Falls. Both equally gorgeous in their own ways. The view from the bridge at Multnomah was spectacular and breaktaking. I think I must have said "wow" at least a thousand times.

After spending the morning there, we drove back to Portland to visit the Oregon Zoo followed by a quick visit to Josephine's Dry Goods and Knit/Purl. And you probably wouldn't believe me, but I managed to walk out of both stores without buying a thing! We ended the night by taking Isaiah to a see the Portland Beavers, a triple A team with a beautiful park right in Portland.

Before we left Thursday morning, we managed to squeeze in a little time to visit Powell's. I sure wish we had more time to spend in that place. Isaiah didn't even want to leave!

It was such a memorable, wonderful trip that it was really hard to leave. The weather was especially great and we did not have one rainy or too cold/ too hot day. I'm sure we'll make another visit there again. There are just so many things to see and do that it was impossible to cram it all into a short period.

The flight back was equally beautiful. This picture of Mt. Hood was taken from the airplane on our way out. Gorgeous, right?

It is good to be back though. Hopefully I'll have time to get to some crafty things and check out what you have all been doing. There's at least 600 posts to catch up on!