The continuation..at least the first half of it...

(Ally, Gage, Julia, Me, Grandpa, Jack and Jeremy)

...The first stop we made on our first full day in Oregon was to see my Grandpa. It was important to me because growing up he was the Grandpa I was intimidated by. He was gruff and stern and just generally didn't seem kid friendly. Even the last time I saw him about 7 years ago he wasn't all that happy to see me. I had heard that he had mellowed and sweetened up recently at the ripe old age of 94 so I really wanted to see him to experience it for myself, you know, before it was too late to make that memory. (The memory for me and my kids, he doesn't exactly make new memories very well anymore). It was great! He was happy to see me and was sweet to my kids. He patted my leg as I sat next to him and said he was so happy we came...I am pretty sure he knew it was me. He gave us hugs and kisses when we left, it made me quite emotional since I hadn't had too much of that from him before. It was nice and just seeing him made the trip worth it.

(Scott's memorial, they planted the tree when they made the memorial, it's so big!)

After we left Grandpa's we drove to my old high school. There's a memorial to my brother Scott there that we visit every time we go to Oregon. The school was open so I was able to show my kids my old locker from my senior year and the cafeteria, etc.. It was a little weird walking around my high school with my husband and 5 kids. We also drove by my old junior high, grade school, church and the house that I grew up in. Some things looked the same, some things have really changed.

(Rich, Julia, Jeremy, Jack, and Grandma Netta)

My Dad suggested we go feed the ducks at the Pringle River. I pictured a few cute little duck families but there were at least a hundred birds there; some ducks and pigeons but mostly geese. We did have to be careful where we stepped...lots of poop...that was gross. Next we went to the Riverfront Park in Salem which is next to the Willamette River. I walked down to the banks of the river, which is full of the smooth little river rocks, and skipped rocks with the kids. We watched an old stern wheel boat take people on rides on the river. It was fun.

(Me and Ally)

There is a carousel at the park that Grandma bought tickets for us to ride on. Each of the horses was custom made by local artists so they all had their own personalities. I had forgotten how "artsy" Oregon is.

(Jeremy, Gage, Jack, Ally and Julia)

Later we walked around my Dad's little town of Monmouth to Western Oregon University which is just a few blocks away. The kids played at the park and found several trees to climb.

(Rich, Jeremy, Jack, Julia, Ally, Me and Gage)

The next day we went to the Columbia River Gorge. We went to Crown Point first which is at the top of the gorge.

(Ally)

The views were beautiful!

(Grandpa, Grandma, and the family)

Next we went down the gorge to Multnomah Falls and hiked up to the bridge.

After that we drove just a little farther to the Bonneville Dam and fish hatchery.

(the Sturgeon)

(Mr. Salmon smiling for the camera)

The fish hatchery had a huge pond full of Salmon and Sturgeon. There was a viewing window where we spent a lot of time watching the huge Sturgeon (they get to be about 10 feet long) and the Salmon swimming by the window. Jeremy took a picture of several of them but, "Mr. Salmon" as I call him, is my favorite because it looks like he's about to say something.

The next day we went to Silver Creek Falls. Rich and I stopped at the view point on the way there because it was so pretty. You can see the Christmas Tree farms behind us.
Okay my Twilight girls...yes, this is the field that the baseball scene in Twilight was filmed. A lot of that movie was filmed in this part of Oregon, including the in the gorge where we were the day before.

(Jack, Julia and Grandma at the top of the falls)

Silver Creek Falls is a little river, a big creek really, that flows over a huge cliff but...

there's a trail that goes under the falls. If you look close you can see the people on the trail under the rock overhang.

(Cousins Megan, Amy and Me)

That night my Aunt, Uncle, Cousins and their families came over to my Dad's for a BBQ. It was fun for my kids to meet even more cool cousins to play with. We made a fire in the fire pit, roasted marshmallows and visited. It was a nice evening and a nice end to the first half of our vacation!

Getting there...

We decided to take our summer trip up to Oregon, my home state. It's about time since we haven't been there since we only had Jeremy and Gage. I finally felt like I needed to go back to see family and show my kids the beautiful state I grew up in.

It takes 15 hours to get to my Dad's house from ours on I-5 if you don't stop for anything. Needless to say we took 2 days to make the drive and decided to see some things on the way.

Our first stop was in Santa Nella for lunch at Pea Soup Anderson's. It's a cute little restaurant in a Dutch Windmill and they are famous for their Pea Soup. Since that was their specialty and my Mother-in-law raved about how great the soup was...she used to go there with her family when she was young...we ordered the token bowl of Pea Soup. It actually tasted a lot better that it looked. It was yummy! Even the little ones liked it...not the bigger ones though.


We cut over to San Francisco to head up the 101 so we could drive through the Redwoods. We saw so many pretty sights along the coast. We had to take a picture of Rich's favorite, a toilet all alone in the middle of a field. He wanted Jeremy to get out and sit on it for the picture but that was a no go, so we just took the shot of the lonesome toilet by itself.

We didn't really have a specific destination in the Redwoods. We figured we'd see lots of really tall trees as we drove through the Redwood National Forrest. We did stop a cute place that had huge carvings of things. The little ones liked the panda that they could climb on.

The Clown Bear Totem Pole was pretty cool but it was so tall we couldn't fit in all in the picture and still see the kids at the bottom. It was a nice stop and the kids got to get out and play a little bit.

It was taking longer than we thought it would because the highway was so small and winding and we kept getting stuck behind really slow drivers. The sun began to set and it was dark by the time we drove by the Avenue of the Giants which probably would have been the best place to stop and see the big trees but we did see a lot of giant trees so we were satisfied. We stopped and stayed the night in Crescent City. It's a cute little coastal town in the very northern tip of California. I was kind of amazed that we had been on the road for over 14 hours and we still weren't out of the state. The next morning Jeremy took his camera, the nice Nikkon (he's a budding photographer among other things) and went to the docks to take pictures.

I've only included a few of my favorites that he took .

But there are many more that I'm going to have to print up and frame.

Once we got into Oregon we stopped in a tiny town called Rice Hill off of I-5 to get Umpqua Icecream. There's a little icecream stand there where I had been when I was little that is still there. It's the cool kind of place where your order of a scoop of icecream is more like two or three scoops. We all got our icecream and then continued on another several hours.

We finally started to see the green rolling hills of where I grew up. I had forgotten how many shades of green there are in Oregon. We also had the overcast skies which is the norm there, but it makes the blue skies that peek through even more appreciated. It was nice to be "home" with the moss on the trees and roofs, the cloudy sky...it's cozy.

We got to my Dad and Step-Mom's house that afternoon. They live in a little old town, in a house built in the late 1800s or early 1900s. I can't remember which. It's on the historical tour of the town. The first thing I did was go to the garden and pick a bunch of raspberries like I used to do in highschool at our old house. I miss all of the fresh fruit grown right in the back yard. Anyway, that was getting there. The rest is to be continued...