A Little Adventure

I guess since we didn’t have any photos to go along with these last two posts they were forgotten. I am going to post them now before I post about our most recent adventures…

After we woke up on Saturday morning, we took it easy. In the afternoon, Scott, Monica and Scott’s aunt Teresa left to go see a few things around Portland. Our first destination was Powell’s City of Books. It seemed that the bookstore took up the entire block and is well, huge. It was multiple levels and had a bunch of different (colored) rooms. We started out in the children’s book section and even found the nursery rhyme book that Milo enjoyed in California. We looked around at several different areas and spent a while there.

After the bookstore, we went up into Washington Park to the Rose Garden. There were some beautiful roses there. We enjoyed that. We also went and saw the Vietnam Memorial. That was awesome as well. Scott wanted to see an overlook for the city and so we spent a bit of time looking for that. We did find a hike that said “overlook”. When we finally got to the “overlook”, the trees had grown in, and so we weren’t able to see much of the city. On the way back home, we drove through the city and it was very fun.

When we got back to the house, Scott’s cousin Paul said that the weather was good enough to go flying. [Scott tells the story] We hopped in the car and headed to the airport a few miles away. Paul took care of everything at the front desk and we went out to check the airplane and get going. The first thing I noticed was how small the airplane was. It really didn’t seem much bigger than my car. I can now see why the weather is such a big factor for these small planes. We took off without incident and flew over the downtown area and the Columbia River Gorge as well as Willamette Falls. I was really quite impressed with how Willamette Falls looked from the air. It was also very interesting to see the terrain we had been hiking in the Gorge from the air. I was quite surprised at how smooth the flight was…apparently the wind had really died down. We followed the Columbia River back toward the airport and landed safely. I didn’t even get sick. I was a bit anxious about the whole experience (especially after I saw how small the plane was), but it was very enjoyable.

As we approached our last day away from SLC, we were beginning to realize that our whirlwind adventure to California and up the coast was coming to an end.