Back from Vacation…

I had a wonderful vacation in Portland!  We had beautiful, warm sunny weather early on in the week, and a couple of overcast days later in the week.  Portland has had some very dry weather recently…  combine this with some forest fires, and you end up with some very hazy days.  Fortunatey, the scenery there is so spectacular that even through some haze, it was still very pretty as always.

SATURDAY

We flew to PDX from Midway in Chicago and arrived early in the afternoon.  After lunch at my all time favorite restaurant in the world, Beaches, we found the condo we’d rented downtown.  We were right on the Willamette River, directly across from the Rose Garden Arena, and between the Broadway Bridge and the Steel Bridge.

We took a nap, having gotten up VERY early, then visited some friends for dinner.

SUNDAY

Whenever I visit Portland, I try to do Sunday brunch at Skamania Lodge. We met one of my friends there and had a wonderful champagne brunch while looking at stunning views of the Columbia River Gorge. My friend went on her way and DBF and I spent the rest of the day in the Gorge looking around. We went to Stevenson and watched windsurfers and kiteboarders, went to Hood River and looked around town, then visited Bonneville Dam.

Bonneville Dam

Fish Ladders at the Dam

From here, we decided to drive along the Historic Columbia River Highway. We stopped at all of the waterfalls along the way, including Horsetail Falls, Oneonta Falls, Multnomah Falls, Wahkeena Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, Latourelle Falls, and finally ended up at Crown Point Vista, which affords amazing views!

Crown Point Building

Inside the Building

View of Columbia River Gorge from Crown Point

We drove up Larch Mountain Road, took a short hike at the top and had spectactular views of Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. Adams in Washington, and Mt. Hood. There were a bunch of photographers up there with their tripods awaiting the harvest moonrise behind the mountain.

Mt. Hood from Larch Mountain

MONDAY

Monday was all about the Oregon Coast. We started off in Cannon Beach and drove along the coast highway down to Lincoln City.

Cape Mears

Oceanside Beach at Low Tide

Tidal Pool Life

TUESDAY

Tuesday morning we slept late, hung around Portland all morning, then decided to take a hike on the south side of Mt. St. Helens. We were headed to the Lava Canyon, but found that a road washout would’ve made it a 5 mile walk just to get to the trail head, so we settled for hiking to June Lake (which is really more like a pond).

Trailhead

View of Mt. St. Helens From the Trail

June Lake and June Lake Falls

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday we drove to central Oregon and hiked the Trail of 10 Falls at Silver Falls State Park. This is a deep canyon that you hike into and follow a river around a loop trail and see 10 waterfalls along the way. The trail is fairly easy, the trees are very lush, with lots of moss growing on them, and the falls are gorgeous. The water flow was fairly low due to being so late in the season, but it was still a great hike! There are three falls where the trail actually goes behind the falls – the picture below was taken from one of these falls…

Just to give an idea of how deep in the canyon you actually are, here is a pic of DBF looking at one of the falls. I couldn’t get the whole canyon wall into the pic, but it goes about 2.5 times higher than what you see here:

What a wonderful hike…. I go to Silver Falls on every trip I make to Oregon.

THURSDAY

Thursday morning, we drove to Scappose Bay Kayacking and rented a couple of kayacks. I didn’t bring my camera because I was concerned about getting it wet. It was a great trip through some very still water. We saw lots of cranes and other wetland birds. The rest of the day was spent around Portland. We drove over the St. Johns Bridge, which is my very favorite bridge:

St. Johns Bridge From the Car

We also visited the Japanese Garden and Rose Garden in Forest Park…

Japanese Garden

Rose Garden

We also went to a wonderful LNS in Beaverton – Acorns and Threads:

Later in the day we went to NW 23rd Street, which is a nice shopping district, looked around and had dinner. A very fun day!

FRIDAY

On our very last full day, we decided to drive up to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. It was pretty cloudy so Mt. Hood wasn’t at all visible from Portland. Timberline Lodge is very cool and kind of looks like a castle on the inside with lots of stonework and arched doorways. One of its claims to fame is that there were some scenes from The Shining that were filmed here. We actually spent most of our time inside playing ping pong and table shuffleboard!

Mt. Hood from Timberline Lodge

Timberline Lodge

On our way back to Portland, we stopped at Beacon Rock and followed the trail a little ways up. We didn’t make it to the top as it started to rain and was getting dark.

SATURDAY

Saturday morning, we walked to the Portland Saturday Market, had breakfast, and drove around downtown Vancouver before catching our flight back home. We got home very very early this morning.

It was a wonderful vacation!

As far as stitching goes, I got about half way through my Autumn House exchange piece. I’ll be working on this until its finished, then getting back to Where Stitchers Gather.