Purcells on Wheels

We spent a week here too.  We wanted to move closer to Mount St Helens so we could see it in a day trip and leave Sophie in the RV.  She couldn’t go anywhere around the Visitor’s Center or on any trails.

We stayed at a campground right on the Columbia River, and watched lots of big ships going back and forth from Portland.  It was really cool.

One day we took a Scenic Drive and saw a few waterfalls, and did some geocaching.  We stopped at Vista House, which overlooks the Gorge.  What a beautiful view!  Multnomah Falls is the popular one.  I first saw it on one of those art doors back in Grants Pass, then people told me we had to go see it.  It was really beautiful, but pretty crowded.  You can see it from I-5, and there is a rest area where highway travelers can stop and access it.  The kids loved it, they got squished pennies and ice cream.

Mount St Helens was really cool.  It was a pretty drive through a bunch of forests owned by Weyerhauser.  It was neat seeing signs for when they planted and when they plan to harvest.  I think they let the trees grow for about 45 years.  Talk about long term planning.  Anyway, it was so interesting to see where the vegetation changed so much after the eruption.  Its still looks very different almost 30 years later.  Right near the mountain it still looks deserty and surreal. I’m waiting for free internet access again to upload a bunch of pictures to Flickr.

I took the photo of the Noble Firs because they looked so neat.  With the branch structure, it looks like the whole scene is composed of layers that don’t quite match up.

We stayed for a week here, because we’ve always heard how nice it is, and progressive.  It was okay, there is definitely a lot to do, but I think you’d have to love cities in general to want to be here.  I think if I liked cities, this one has a lot going for it.  But I don’t.  I’d have to live out a bit, with a few acres of our own, and just come into the city when we had to.  The best thing it has is Powell’s Books.  Its an entire city block of bookstore, both used and new.  It was incredible.  We spent over two hours and I never left the kids section.  The kids were happy the entire time.  Sean got to look around the store a little more, but since we bought over 50 books for the kids, I thought it best to not find more.  We rounded out a couple of series for them, and picked up a bunch of classics, like Wind in the Willows, Huckleberry Finn, and lots more that I’ve never read either.  This store is the reason it would be expensive for us to live too near Portland.

There are a ton of farmer’s markets around, we went to a small one in a nearby town, which was nice because it wasn’t too crowded.  Then we went to what we thought was a big one in Portland, but we went to the wrong place.  We ended up at the Saturday Market, which is pretty much just a huge arts and crafts show.  It was very crowded, lots of…interesting…people, and a lot of cool stuff I wanted to buy.  I restrained myself somewhat though.

One place we had to check out was VooDoo Doughnuts.  Its just a little hole in the wall shop but man, they had some good stuff!  Sean got one frosted with maple syrup and topped with bacon.  I thought it looked gross but he said it was delicious.  I had the Dirty Old Man, which was frosted with Oreo crumbs and peanut butter.  We got a big apple fritter which we ate for breakfast the next morning, also delicious.

We had heard McMinnville was nice, about an hour away, so we drove out there one day to look around.  We happened to pass the Sokol Blosser winery, which makes our favorite white wine, Evolution #9.  We had to stop and pick some up.  It was a gorgeous winery.  McMinnville was okay, an interesting downtown, but we’d need to spend more time there and meet some people.  We found a really big letterbox here, in a little park next to a little airport.  One of the trails led out to the runway, and we watched a couple of small planes take off.  I was amazed it wasn’t fenced off from public access, but maybe people have more common sense out here in the sticks.

We also went to visit a woman who has Leonbergers one day, which was fun for me.  I doubt I’ll take Sophie with me to meet any more though, she’s old and gets knocked over easily in her old age.  She doesn’t really want to play with other dogs, and is so nervous about new people there’s hardly any point.

I’m having more and more trouble making myself get the blog updated.  I post a lot of stuff on Facebook, and I’ve been trying to keep up with editing all the pictures.  By the time I’m done with that I usually don’t have the energy for the blog.

Anyway, we spent a week in Astoria.  Its right at the mouth of the Columbia River.  I think its about 10,000 people.  We really liked it here, its very beautiful.  I think I might feel hemmed in living in town though, there are a lot of zero lot line houses.  But maybe, we did see some with a bit more yard.  Some of the prices were pretty reasonable too.   We’re still trying to figure out what we want to do to make a living, so living in town rather than a bit more rural is still an option.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that if we move here, one of the first things I’m going to do is cut my hair.  The wind blowing it in my face all the time drove me nuts.  I’d go ahead and cut it now, but it would be a pain to have to start finding salons along the way to keep it cut.

We went to see the Column, which was really cool.  Go read about it if you have a minute, its really interesting.  The big bummer though, was not being able to climb up to the top.  The stairs are being replaced, and were supposed to be installed the week we were there, but the recession caused layoffs at the stair factory, so now they don’t know when it will be open again.

We did some letterboxing and geocaching, which took us to the Wet Dog Cafe.  It was really tasty.  I had a Clucker Burger, which has a fried egg on top.  It was SO good!

We went to the Columbia River Maritime Museum, which the adults thought was interesting.  The kids, not so much.  They were a bit obnoxious, but liked playing on a big torpedo and the giant anchor outside.

One of my favorite things here was the Peter Iredale shipwreck.  Its a ship that ran aground in 1906, and the skeleton is still on the beach.  Its in a state park, and its so neat that everyone has access to it.  We also started talking to a woman who taught us how to dig for razor clams.  We helped her for awhile by keeping her 3 year old son happy playing, so she could stay longer.  She’s from Montana, been in Astoria for 10 years and loves it.  I’m still kicking myself in the butt for not getting her name and email address.

Caitlin really wanted to go across the big bridge, the Astoria-Megler Bridge, so we did that one afternoon.  Washington State is right across the river, so we took a day trip to Washington, and made the kids very happy.

After Salem we headed over to Lincoln City for a week.   Our park was across the street from a beach.  We had lots of fun there, despite some chilly, very windy days.  We also went up to Tillamook Cheese Factory one day.  It was great, the best grilled cheese sandwiches I’ve had.  They have a self-guided tour which was cool.  You watch the production line from a big window upstairs.  The kids liked watching the hunks of cheese travel around on conveyor belts.  Self-guided meant we didn’t have to move along with a herd, or listen to some droning voice, which was nice.  We took a ’scenic drive’ back, which turned out to not be very scenic or exciting.  We stopped at Pacific City beach on the way, which was nice, had a big seastack out in the bay, and a pretty cape on one side.  Then we went back home to pick up the dog before going to our beach again.

Two other days we drove down to Newport.  We ate dinner one night at a really cool restaurant called Local Ocean, where we sat next to the kitchen and watched the chefs cook, while also looking out the giant windows at the fishing boats in the marina.  Food was very good.  We stopped at a few other beaches along the way and had fun.

We’ve been doing some geocaching and letterboxing, which gets us out, and we see places we otherwise wouldn’t.  Its great fun.

While we enjoyed visiting the little beach towns, I don’t think we’d want to live in any of the ones we saw.  They were a little too small, and too far away from larger towns.

Apparently I can’t upload any pictures right now, not sure why.  Every time I try to insert pics into the post, Firefox crashes.  It’s late and I’m tired so I’ll figure that out later.

We spent a week in Salem to visit some of my family, and a friend who used to live in Florida.  The town itself was okay, not somehwere we’ll put on the list though.  We met my aunt and uncle and took the kids to a local kid museum.  They had a great time.  We hiked behind a waterfall in a state park.  We went to a cool, hand-carved wooden carousel, which I loved.  Went to the Iris Festival and local iris garden.  The garden was wonderful, such gorgeous floweres.  I want some irises now when we settle down.  The festival itself was pretty lame and small, we thought.  Apparently its a big deal there though, it was packed when we drove by it again on Saturday.  We went to my aunt and uncle’s house on Sunday, visited cousins, kids played with their 2nd cousins, then it was time to pack up and move to the coast.

We spent a week here, and really liked it alot.  Its not too big, nestled in the mountains, and is pretty artsy.  The local banking magnate funds a lot of art stuff.  Right now there is the Doors of Oregon project.  Thirty-three doors salvaged from a hotel that was torn down, given to local artists to paint scenes from around the state, and will be auctioned off at the end of the summer.  I found 32 of them and took pictures, which are up on flickr.

We spent a couple of days looking around at property, and found it to be pretty affordable.  Its also supposed to be drier here than farther north in the state.  So we’ll put this town on our list of possibilities, but I don’t know about Oregon in general.  The whole gas pumping thing really bugs me.  I don’t think we should move to a state where I know I’m gonna get frustrated and ticked off every time we get gas.  On the other hand, no sales tax is really nice!  I think we should live on the Washington/Oregon border, in Washington.  They have no state income tax, so we can live there, and shop in Oregon.

We didn’t do a lot of touristy stuff here, it was nice to relax a bit and get some schooling done.  We did take a jetboat tour down the Rogue river through Hellgate Canyon.  That was a lot of fun.  And gorgeous.  On the way back, they do a bunch of donuts in the water and get everybody wet.

We just got to Salem yesterday, and will stay here for a week.  We have some friends and family to visit.  It looks like there is a ton of stuff to do all over the state.  Its really hard to not try and see everything, but we have to balance sightseeing with normal, stay at home days too, and not clean out our bank account by doing everything that sounds interesting.

After 3 months in California, we finally made it to Oregon last Monday. We’re here for a week, then will move up to the middle of the state on I-5 for a week, then up toward Portland for awhile. We have driven around a bit to check out this area. Its pretty, and seems like there is a lot to do around. We were extremely turned off though when we had to get gas. Turns out Oregon is one of two states that doesn’t allow you to pump your own gas. It took us about 1/2 an hour to fill up, by the time we waited in line, then waited for the guy to get around to filling our tank. We asked why on earth Oregon requires this, its horribly inefficient, I can’t even imagine how much time and gas gets wasted while people just sit and wait. He said it creates 500.000 jobs. I think he’s full of crap and the whole thing was exceedingly annoying. Big strike against Oregon. They have no state sales tax though. Hmmm.

Its supposed to rain quite a bit in the near future, so we’ve been looking for raincoats for us and the kids. It took two cities and TEN stores before we found them. Ian and Caitlin picked their own. He got blue, she got pink. They look like such a classic boy and girl. No pics yet, its been raining.

We chilled out in Napa for a week.  We had been doing too much touristy stuff and needed to relax.  We saw Julie and Matt, had a wonderful time at their house.  The kids had a great deal of fun playing in their backyard.  We also toured 3 wineries one afternoon.  I was amazed, the kids were so good the whole time.  The campground was good, small, but with big sites, and a huge field where the kids spent hours collecting ladybugs.  They had been looking forward for months to going to the Jelly Belly Factory again, so we had a great time doing that.  Last year we also found a neat playground, so we went back to that a couple of times too.

Then we moved up to Redding.  I hadn’t seen my cousin Mary in 8 years.  She has two kids, each a year older than my two.  They had a wonderful time playing together.  Turns out there is a lot to do around Redding.  We loved Shasta Dam.  They give free tours, and near the bottom of the dam, there is a long, tiled hallway that is awesome for playing with echoes.  If you clap your hands at one end, you can hear it whiz down the hall and then crash at the end.  Photos weren’t allowed on the tour though, I had to take some from up top.  The Sundial Bridge was also cool, though it wasn’t sunny when we went.  Even when it is sunny, the sundial is only accurate on the Summer Solstice.  We would have gone hiking in Mt. Lassen Nat’l Park, but the roads were all still closed for the winter.

We spent a week in Napa, but I didn’t write anything, because we didn’t do much.  We visited our niece Julie, and spent a lot of time doing nothing, since we had been doing so much tourist stuff.

Then we moved up to Redding, where we have been so busy I haven’t had time to write anything.  My cousin Mary and family live near here.  They also have a boy and a girl, each a year older than Ian and Caitlin.  The kids have been having a blast playing together.  We went to their house Wed, to Shasta Dam, a cool kids’ playground, and Sundial Bridge today.  Tomorrow we’ll visit the house they own near here, then go back to their current house for some hiking and more playing.  This weekend its time to finally make it to Oregon.  We’ve been in California now since January, its time to get out.

This is just not a city I do well in.  This is the second time we’ve been here, and both times, within a couple of hours, my nerves are just fried.  There is so much going on, too many people, constant noise bombardment, etc.  I just can’t handle it.  I’m sure I must have some sort of condition since I’m the only one I know who is affected this way.  I don’t care what it is, I just don’t ever want to come back here.  We had a nice ferry ride over from Sausalito.  I brought my jacket because I’m always cold, but this day turned out to be one of the few hot, sunny days.  And it was Hot!  One of the things we didn’t get to do last time was ride the cable cars, so we took one to Chinatown.  There is a fortune cookie factory there, where you can watch them being made.  The kids love fortune cookies so off we went.  It was neat to see, and we bought a bag of them.  We looked in a couple of shops, but they were all my worst nightmare, incredibly crowded with cheap, gaudy crap from China.  We didn’t stay too long, but when we tried to catch a cable car back to the pier, we had to wait a long time for one that wasn’t too crowded.  I nearly passed out from the heat.