Oregon!

Warning: This is a picture-heavy post about our trip to Oregon.

For our 5 year wedding anniversary, Dave and I made the trek to Oregon for 4 days. Dave's parents gladly (thanks!) babysat Kyle for the long weekend so we could have some much-needed alone time. We had a great trip despite all the cold rain. Here's a summary of our trip:

We flew into Portland and immediately hit the road for Multnomah Falls and the Mt. Hood scenic byway. We stopped to see various waterfalls, the dam, a scenic lake and a couple of (what could've been) rather pretty views of Mt. Hood.

After completing the majority of this loop, we headed on down to Bend. We half expected this town to be like Boulder based on all we had read. It was anything but. It was a ghost town that had definitely felt the effects of the recession. Actually, we would later come to realize much of Oregon had been hit pretty hard by the economy (at least by our Colorado standards!). While it was our nicest weather of the trip, it was still pretty dreary. We questioned our waiter at a seafood restaurant about the 300+ days of sunshine fact for this town and he just about laughed into tears. He said they had snow until August and expected to begin winter in a couple weeks. A ten month winter? Yikes!

The next morning, we hit the road for Crater Lake NP. On our way, we had fun playing around with the Ford Fusion's SYNC feature. We had some pretty serious giggles with the voice recognition software.

We had our best weather of the trip at Crater Lake. It was a bit chilly and overcast, but it wasn't raining! Ironically, they closed the park for the winter two days after we visited, so we had great timing because they often have the roads closed through June!

Crater Lake was probably the most scenic stop during our trip-- we were quite amazed by the size and depth of the lake. I believe it's the deepest lake in the US at 2000 feet. Formed from a volcano, the caldera lake has a magical blue hue to it that's hard to capture in picture.

Our favorite stop at Crater Lake (which required a bit of a detour) were the Pinnacle rocks. These volcanic layered towers of rock were really neat!

On our way to the coast from Crater Lake, we did a whirl-wind tour of all the many waterfalls along the way. Because we were running (pun intended) short on time, Dave had to run a few of them to get his cotton-candy shots.

We spent the night on the coast in Florence, Oregon at a casino. I won $10 playing slots and Dave won $50 playing poker. It was along the waterfront here that we enjoyed our most favorite meal of the trip. We couldn't recommend the Crab-encrusted Halibut with Chili creme sauce at the Waterfront Depot more. Seriously. best. seafood. ever! At only $12, I could've eaten every meal of the trip here! In fact, we joked about this fact at every meal thereafter!

Our drive up the coast started with a stop at the Sea Lion caves. Sadly, there were no sea lions present, but we enjoyed the world's largest sea cave anyway.

We took our time driving the coast stopping at all of the major turnouts (the mile-by-mile guidebook was great!). It was gloomy and rainy but it gave the coast this mystique feeling!

As we made our way up further north, we made a stop at the must-visit Tilamook Cheese factory. It was great because the "tour" wasn't long and there were tons of samples. I think I made 3 trips through the sample line (shhhh!). We also had some of their famous ice cream. It was really delish!

Continued in next post....