Our trip to Oregon--Part One

On June 8th we took off on a road trip with Mark & Tam and Jeff & Carol.  Our final destination was Oregon.  It took us three days to get there. (Mark wrote emails to his kids and also sent them to us describing the trip.  I have taken the liberty of using some of his words, along with my own, in describing our trip in these blog posts.)

 Our first stop was at Shoshone Falls near near Twin Falls, Idaho.  They are beautiful!!

That first night we stayed in Twin Falls, Idaho at the Holiday Inn Express.

 The next day we traveled to Hood River, Oregon, where we stayed in The Hood River Express Inn. The hotel sits on the banks of the Columbia river, with balconies overlooking the river and a toll bridge that crosses into Washington.  Before heading out the next day we crossed the bridge so we could say we'd been in Washington, and on the way back to the Oregon side we got a picture of our hotel with Mount Hood in the background.  

 We stopped at Multnomah Falls just before we got to Portland.  It was absolutely gorgeous.  And yes, this is an actual picture that was taken by Mark.  Jed and I and Carol are standing on that bridge!

 We took a northwest route from Portland so we could end up in the northwest corner of the state and follow the coast south.  First stop on the coast was Cannon Beach, famous for a large rock in the ocean known as Haystack Rock, made even more famous by the movie "Goonies." 

We stopped along the way to take pictures and someone suggested that it would be cool to climb a nearby, large tree and have pictures taken.  I accepted the challenge and with a little bit of help from the guys I climbed up into the tree.  After taking pictures along this very beautiful beach, we ate in downtown Cannon Beach.  This town was an obvious tourist attraction with many shops, most of them were quite expensive and many interesting eating places.  Then we headed down the coast, one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world.  Part of the way we were next to the coast, then the highway would veer inland and we'd be in deep forest, then back to the coastline.  We stopped in Rockaway long enough for Aunt Carol to feed the squirrels.  From then on she always carried a loaf of bread for the squirrels.  We stopped in Newport, the largest and prettiest city on the coast and bought groceries. We then arrived in Yachats and found our beach house.  It was a very roomy home, with al the amenities, overlooking the ocean south of Yachats, pronounced Yah-hots. It was a very comfortable place for us to stay.  We were right next to the beach and went there often in the days that followed.