Our vacation to Oregon was from Friday, May 23 to Saturday the 31st. Friday morning we left before sunrise, Odessa still in pajamas, for the Dane County Regional Airport. We had a flight to Minneapolis, and then on to Portland. We were unsure how Odessa would tolerate the plane ride, but we had a pretty good idea that it wouldn’t be pleasant.

She ended up doing well for the first flight. The longer ride to Portland was much more difficult, and for the last 45 minutes everyone else on the plane became very familiar with her voice. Throughout the vacation, Odessa really struggled with transportation in general. She was asked to sit still for a very long time, whether in planes or cars, and I am sure it seemed very unfair to her.

It was raining in Portland when we landed. We dropped some things off at the house that Emily, Bonnie, and Emily’s friend Rachel shared, and then drove east into the Columbia River Gorge. It was a beautiful place. We stopped at Multnomah Falls, which is a gigantic 600ft waterfall. It was very impressive. We continued east and drove around in a valley where there are orchards and wineries before returning back to Portland for a very nice dinner that Bonnie and Rachel had prepared. It is my belief that Bonnie is some kind of super human.

On Saturday we went to the markets in downtown Portland, which were great. Later in the day, everyone but Serena and I headed to Seaside, OR while we stayed behind to be on our own for a bit. That afternoon we headed back into the gorge to get better looks at the many waterfalls there, and they were spectacular. It was sunny for most of the day, but as we were making our return to Portland we were caught up in a very intense hailstorm.

The next day we drove into Washington to take a 13 stop waterfall tour I had planned out ahead of time. It was an ill-fated endeavor from the outset and the first negative was the persistent morning rain. Many of the falls I picked were in somewhat remote areas. We spent a lot of time on gravel roads, sort of in the middle of nowhere in a state I had never been to. After driving for a while en route to the first falls, we eventually came to a gate. The road was closed.

Looking at the GPS I planned an alternate route to the first falls. That road, too, ended up being closed. So we backtracked about a half hour and tried yet another route. This one ended up working, but we had lost about an hour’s worth of time. This wasn’t good because I had the day pretty tightly scheduled, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

After the next couple falls weren’t much trouble things seemed to be going more smoothly. We were on a gravel road and had been for almost an hour. It was kind of a creepy road. We were in some high elevation areas and there was a lot of fog and haze. Downed trees and snow lined, and sometimes crossed parts of, the road. We didn’t see any other cars the entire time. Eventually we had to stop the car because the road was covered in snow.

I got out to scout around, but it was clear that we could go no further. The snow was two feet deep in places and continued for as far as I could see. Our little rental car wasn’t quite made for this and it would be a pretty awful thing to get stuck out here. We had to turn around and go all the way back to the beginning, abandoning the waterfalls that lay beyond and losing a couple more hours of time. Because of the time lost, I had to start cutting more future waterfalls out of the tour.

The centerpiece of the day’s tour was to be Falls Creek Falls. From what I had heard about it, it was supposed to be incredible. The thing was, it required a 3.5 mile round trip hike which I figured would take about 2 1/2 hours total, including the time to photograph it and to do a nearby geocache. The distance wasn’t the problem, the precious time it would take to do the hike was. We talked about whether we should cut it out in order to see more waterfalls, but we ended up deciding to try it anyway.

We made our way and began our hike. It was a beautiful area, but we couldn’t help but feel hurried. We found the geocache with no difficulties, thankfully. When we got to the falls it became immediately apparent that we had made the right decision. Its magnitude and power were immense.

It started to rain on us on our walk back, and we were pretty wet for the second time in two days (yesterday we got drenched by a waterfall’s spray). I cut another two waterfalls from the tour, and we headed to our next target. That waterfall was hard to view because a tree had fallen and knocked out the viewpoint. Then we went to our two final destinations only to be met by a washed out and collapsed road. Of my top five waterfalls of the day, we got to see number one, but numbers two through five eluded us. We made our way to rejoin the others at Seaside where Bonnie had prepared yet another delicious meal for us to devour.

The next day we went tidepooling, which was something I had wanted to do even in Alaska. It was fantastic and I could spend hours doing it. Following that we went crabbing. We split into two teams by drawing cards and decided to have a friendly competition. Utilizing very skillful tactics, such as cheating, they were able to win.

Bonnie and Rachel had obligations in Portland on Tuesday so Serena and I offered to drive them back, and then we would explore Portland a little bit ourselves. We walked around downtown for a while. It is a neat area. Then we left to go visit Leah, a friend of Serena’s, who lived in the Portland area. We didn’t spend too much time there but enough that I feel comfortable saying she is one of the friendliest people I’ve met. While there, Odessa tripped while playing outside. It was her first real fall on cement and had her parents quite alarmed, but she was just fine.

On Wednesday everyone went to Astoria, which is in the northwest corner of Oregon. We walked around, ate at a restaurant, went in a weird store, and visited a tribute to Lewis and Clark in column form. The next day we split up a bit. Serena, Emily, and their mother went shopping, Brad and Odessa went for a walk, and I went out looking for wildflowers and waves to photograph. Following that, Serena and I went tidepooling again for a short while before rejoining the others at Seaside. We went to the local aquarium and Emily did her first geocache.

On Friday the weather was nicer and Serena, Odessa, and I planned to drive south along the coast. Like the other trip I planned, the waterfall tour, this one had its own share of complications. We lost two hours in the morning because our car keys couldn’t be found. We even had a guy come and pry open our door but the keys weren’t in the car. We eventually located them in an unlikely place: Brad’s coat pocket. Before the day was over I would also lose my sun glasses and rip a hole in my pants when it got caught on a fence. That evening, we all met up and ate a nice dinner in Cannon Beach.

In the morning we packed to leave. The plane ride back to Minneapolis was mostly uneventful. Serena’s mother is very good with Odessa and actually got her to sleep for a large part of the flight. There was a thunderstorm over Minneapolis which delayed our landing a bit, somewhat shortening our three hour layover. After waking up just a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean and sixteen hours of travel time later, we finally made it back to our apartment in Madison.

The trip was a lot of fun for all of us. We thank Serena’s parents for their incredible generosity and also Emily, Bonnie, and Rachel for their hospitality.