Oregon!

So last week my family and I took a vacation up the the wonderful states of Oregon and Washington. Reason: Because we needed a break, and my brother had another wedding reception that we needed to attend. We left for Oregon on tuesday the 3rd. We took the road up through Boise, Idaho and then over toward Bend, Oregon. Then toward the coast, up to portland, then washington, along the Columbia river, and home again through Boise and Montpelier.

On our way through Idaho we stopped to see the Shoshone Falls. It was beautiful! The place itself has a dam that blocks a good share of the river and what the falls should be, but it still allows for the water to go through which creates such beautiful falls. A funny story with this is as we were all in the car about to drive out of the parking lot and back on our way to Oregon, there was this random lady that started flaging us down to stop. She wanted to talk to us and had a huge camera in her hands. Mom said "I hope she isn't planning on interviewing us or something..." So the lady gets up to the car window, asks us if we heard the gunshots and then sticks the camera in Dad's face. As it turned out we hadn't heard them and that was disappointing to her...but it got the camera out of the car. :) Much to everyone's relief I'm sure.

Later that same day we eventually managed to get to the actual state of Oregon, but that was a very long drive. While there this first day we decided to take a bit of a senic byway and drive by what they call the Pillars of Rome which is of course near the city of Rome. I had found some pictures of them on the internet while planning our trip and was excited to see them. As it turned out... they were a bit of a disappointment. We ended up driving through them about 3 times and still never saw much of what the pictures on the internet were advertising... so disappointing. After that we continued on our way west and found a hotel to stay in that night near the city Bend.

The next day we stopped by to see a lava cave. Its called the lava river cave and we were able to self tour the cave as long as we had two sources of light with us. That was kinda funny as we brought a lantern and two flashlights, but as it worked out all of them gave off a very pitiful source of light and we ended up renting one from the rangers so that we could actually see where we were going and the structures of the cave. It was very dark and cold, but so cool to see.

The cave itself is about a mile long one way and only has the one entryway so to see the whole thing you would have walk about two miles. The cave had some pretty cool structures to see, but because of our bad lighting and the general darkness, the pictures didn't turn out so well, but you get the idea. When we were about halfway through the cave my mom unfortunately twisted her ankle and decided that it would be a bad idea for her to continue any further, so my parents returned to the entrance to wait, while me and my younger siblings continued to the end. It turned out to be quite the adventure.

There is this one part in the cave where it's like a canyon and it's way cool. Once you get toward the end of the cave there is a part that is mostly filled with sand and so me and my younger siblings all had to get down and practically crawl to reach the end, we were in the position for so long that our legs started going to sleep and we never did reach the end. But it all worked out, and we had lots of fun.

Once we saw the cave we then had another long drive and headed over to Crater Lake. I think it was the most blue lake i have ever seen. The roads around the lake are very curvy and narrow and so it was somewhat scary to drive on but the lake was worth the drive. On one part of the lake there is this island that they call the Ghost Ship. Basically it does look like a ship, however i also think it looks a little sunk or at least beached. I didn't post a picture of it but it was cool anyway.

We drove all the way around the lake and by the time we were about half way just about all of us had had enough of seeing the same lake over and over and over again, but looking back it was nice. That night we camped in the forested area near the lake, and as awed as we were the night before, in the morning we were all pleasantly surprised to see the surrounding forest and its beauty that we had camped in. We took many pictures and Lynette and I were fairly hyper, but it was all fun.

The next adventure that we experienced was in the Coastal city of Bandon. They have a West Coast Wildlife Safari there, which is more or less actually a petting zoo. As it turns out it was expensive, but VERY worth it. See one of my favorite animals happens to be the tiger. As it turns out this zoo happened to have two tiger cubs that we could pet and hold. They were sooo cute, and it was so fun. We also got to pet a lion cub and a karacle cat.

There were of course lots of ducks, goats, deer, lamas and donkeys also around that we could pet. One of these particular amimals, the lama to be exact, decided it didn't like me, at all. This lama is of the alpacka kind, you know the ones you see on the move 'the emperor's new groove,' yeah, this one didn't like me. It kept trying to spit on me, and would follow me until i was a certain distance away. Later i did get to pet a different lama, but any time i saw that particular lama it would stare at me until i went away again. The lama to the right is the one that just happened to hate me, and so you know, right up close it has really ugly teeth and its mouth is about at my eye level, it's a rather large lama if i do say so myself.

Throughout the rest of our vacation we went to the Coastal area where we saw some lighthouses, the sea lion caves, went out on a jetty and played on the beach.

We of course went to Evan and Jen's wedding reception at her family's house and spent some time with them.

We stopped to see the Oregon Portland Temple, which is so BEAUTIFUL! All of Oregon is really. After seeing the temple we also stopped to see some of the old covered bridges. Some of them were really cool.

They were built to keep the bridges in better shape what with all the wet weather in that area. One of the bridges we stopped at happened to have a train track bridge right next to it as well, so rather then pass up the opportunity, some of us took a walk on the tracks for a bit. It was fun :)

Then we drove up into Washington and saw Mt. St. Helen's from a distance. We also drove along the Columbia river and saw a bunch of waterfalls that are there along the old Highway.

Unfortunately for me it was during this time that my camera decided to be stupid and not work, so all the pictures that i had thought i had taken of the waterfalls...weren't there. So a good portion of the trip that i thought was recorded, wasn't. :( I was very very put out by this and even more angry when within two hours after we had passed all the falls my camera once again decided it could work and actually keep the pictures that i took. Grrrrr.... I suppose the one good thing is at least i don't have to get a new camera... yet.

Before stopping for the night on saturday we stopped to see a lock, (one for ships) that was no longer working as the river was much deeper now, but it was kinda cool. It was strange too as there were stairs going down into the river and you go to the edge of the water and you can see more just going down, down, down. We spent Sunday driving home a long way as we had to drop Brett off at Camp Bartlett, Idaho.

It was a very long trip but totally worth it, and as you can imagine... we got a little bored just driving. I have however, now fallen in love with that area of the world I want nothing more then to go back and see more. Perhaps a trip to Washington will be next. :)