Trip Out West

We headed out to Portland for the memorial of our friend Bridget. The service was beautiful, but very sad. The hardest part was watching all of the pictures of her flash by and realize we would not get to see her again, her little girls would not get to grow up with her, and our friend Steve was left without his best friend.

After the memorial we had some time to spend in Portland and Seattle. We got to spend some good time with Steve and Grace too!

JAPANESE GARDENS-

The gardens are so beautiful and quiet and have such an amazing view!

view from the garden

ROSE GARDENS-

Portland has this amazing rose test garden where they try out new types of roses. The place smells amazing and is so pretty!

I like this Shakespeare quote
this picture doesn't really show how big these roses were...easily the size of my hand!
UP THE COAST-
One day we decided to hop in the car and head up the coast. A while back we'd done a long road trip up the 101 from LA to Oregon...so we decided to hop back on the 101 for a while. The shoreline was really pretty.
Then we hit the town of ....SEASIDE (found this quite amusing that the ONLY tree is directly in front of their sign! This city reminds me a lot of Atlantic City on the East Coast...cheesy beach touristy stuff all over. It was the end of the season for sure so it was not very crowded. But we saw they did have a Red Sox bar...however at 8 am we figured it was a wee bit early to pop in!
Then we hopped back in the car and headed out of Oregon, over the bridge...
down the other side...
into Washington!
Where I encountered my first ever Tsunami warning sign!
We stopped at a crossroads and got some gas while I went into what was advertised on the sign outside as the cleanest bathrooms in the city and had the lovely sign above hanging above the toilet. ha!
Then the paper mills. Sam knew about these guys from his work so we stopped to take a pic. So many of the seaside towns are set up for some sort of lumber/paper milling!
We decided to stop in Ocean City for lunch...and found you can drive right out onto the beach. Sam didn't want to drive any closer to the water...come on it's a rental!! :)
We decided not to go here for lunch, I was a little weirded out by the fact that it is Mike's Seafood and they have pictures of Flipper and Shamu on their windows!!

We stopped to check out where we were supposed to have camped and were happy with our decision not to! But the beach by it was pretty.
Any idea what they sell at this place?!
And we missed Logger's Playday by ONE week!!!

more of the logging...

SEATTLE-

I know, I know...Seattle Art Museum, but it's SAM!

Ahhh...the ferries of Seattle, it was a gorgeous night out, too bad the lunch in Ocean City didn't sit well with Sam he was SO sick!
so we headed back to our hotel and this was the view on the way home
The next morning we headed out to see some of the sights of Seattle the fish guys were great!
and OF COURSE we hit the first Starbucks
Sam in line

mmmmmm...
We met Sam's cousin Adam for some lunch (yummy sushi) and then made one last pit stop to the main attraction in Seattle.

This one's for Mandy...she LOVES jean shorts...but I feel this is the COMPLETE package, jean shorts, red Mustang convertible, Rush t-shirt from a show years ago, and slicked back hair!! The best part is missing from the picture however because he put the top down, had some classic rock blaring and peeled out of the parking lot! Pretty sure Mandy called dibs but if anyone else is interested you could talk to her.

BACK TO OREGON-

Sam...chasing a squirrel, which for those of you that know Sam and animals you are probably pretty surprised he went toward it! :)
This was a very cool park in Portland where we spent a few hours our last day there.
Part of the below memorial as you walk up...
to the Holocaust Memorial.

We got to spend some great time with Steve and Grace and their families and were lucky enough to meet Chloe as well. We are so proud of how well this little girl is doing, in fact she just came home this past weekend! Keep her and the family in your prayers through this transition!