We spent our first night in Centralia, Washington.
I let the waitress know it was Aaron's birthday and they did the customary embarrassing happy birthday. It was great! It also happened to be the first time we had heard happy birthday in Spanish.
The second day was mostly travel, a little bit of shopping, & we stayed the night in Albany. The next day we headed to Corvallis to visit Colleen & pick up some motorcycle parts she has been holding on to for Aaron. Then it was over to Monmouth, for a quick trip up to the Chamberlin cemetery to see how grown up it has become.
After checking out the cemetery we headed back up to Salem to visit with Charlotte.
Along the way we took this little ferry.
Afterward we headed back up north & stayed in Wilsonville for a night.
Then it was off to explore Portland for a few days.
We had a great time!
This is the Lan Su Chinese Garden. This place is a Ming Dynasty Style garden and is gorgeous!
http://www.lansugarden.org/
http://www.lansugarden.org/
Pittock Mansion
This is where you get the best view of the city of Portland!
The following day we headed to the Grotto, which is at the National Sanctuary for Sorrowful Mother.
The Meditation Chapel
Although we aren't Catholic ourselves, we learned a lot about the religion through the storytelling of sculptures & other artwork.
But then again who wouldn't be in that position...
(Sorry I couldn't resist!)
The Labyrinth
Victory!
St Anne's Chapel
It really was a very beautiful & peaceful botanical garden.
Religious or not, there's no way a person wouldn't appreciate the beauty of the Grotto.
The following day we got the roof rack installed on my car. While that was being done we walked around the city & just tried to stay dry! We checked out Powell's City of Books, which is the largest independent chain of book stores. This particular location is a city block in size, 3 stories high, and carries over a million books. Sorry no pictures of the book store.
We used the Urban Spoon app a lot to decide where we were going to eat. We felt like some authentic Mexican & had no idea what we had coming to us!
The car with my nice new roof rack.
After the car was done it was time for us to start making our way north & head home.
We spent our last night in Shelton Washington, which made for a scenic drive to the Port Angeles ferry to Victoria. All along the drive were random rhododendrons which were beautiful.
Nice way to end a holiday!
All & all it was a fantastic getaway! We'll be back in Oregon again in August:)
