Oregon {Part 1}

Nine days

One flight to Portland

1200 miles logged in our rental car

Six hotels and endless pit stops along the way

Eugene, Bandon, Medford, Bend, Salem, Portland

Countless beaches, hikes, waterfalls, and gorgeous green parks

Delicious restaurants, donuts and ice cream

One flight to Salt Lake, and,

we're home!

How do you sum up a vacation in a blog post?  Either in one gigantic long post or broken up in multiple posts...both sound daunting at this point.  I'm going to break it up into sections of our trip as best I can.  Here goes round one...

Background:

Marcus served his mission in Oregon and we've wanted to go back to visit for years, so when my sister and her husband moved there for the summer we figured it was the perfect opportunity.  Marcus planned the best trip for us - he mapped out where we should go, keeping our days flexible and unstructured but getting us destinations and hotels each night.  It was such an adventure.  We spent many, many hours in the car, but it was gorgeous pretty much everywhere we went and Asher was sure a trooper.  He napped in the car or was pretty happy reading books or playing with his little toys.  He was such a little cutie to have with us.  I loved exploring and felt that by road tripping it we got to see so much of this pretty state.

First stop: Portland temple.  Man that temple is gorgeous!  We then headed towards Eugene.  On the way we stopped at McDowell Creek Falls near Lebanon and hiked to some waterfalls.

I think I was most surprised by how green everything was and that there were farms and nurseries EVERYWHERE.  There were thousands and thousands of Christmas tree farms and it really was all so picturesque and fun to see.

Elise and Mike were able to drive up to meet us in Eugene and camped out in our hotel room with us that night.  We stayed up playing farkle and had such a good time with them.

We enjoyed a delicious waffle breakfast at Off the Waffle, played and explored in gorgeous, green parks, and went to the Saturday's market there in Eugene.  

This picture is blurry but it pretty much sums up Asher's excitement to get to hang out with Lise & Mike.  He asked for them every single day of our trip that we weren't with them.

We also were able to visit with one of Marcus' converts which was a really sweet experience.  It was neat for me to get to see a little bit of that side of Marcus.  We also found all of his old apartments and I have to admit, I was kinda surprised by how run down most of them were.

...to be continued with our coastal adventures...