Our first stop in Oregon was at Grant’s Pass. We only stayed one night because we didn’t have enough cell phone signal for Eric to work, but it was a pretty park right on the river. We continued North and ended up at South Beach State Park in Newport, Oregon. It rained a lot while we were there and it was cooler than the weather we have been used to…the kids even had to wear PANTS while we were there. I thnink they forgot that pants even exist and they get kinda upset when I tell them they have to wear them!

We spent one day exploring Yaquina point lighthouse and tidepools and also drove over to a rock called the devil’s punchbowl. The tidepools were amazing, we saw so many cool creatures and the kids had fun exploring and finding all the items on the scavenger hunt list.

We left Newport and headed to Troutdale, Oregon which was about 30 minutes outside of Portland. We drove through Tillamook on our way which is home to Tillamook cheese factory. We sampled lots of cheese and bought some to bring home and had some delicious ice cream. It was a nice detour. Who doesn’t love cheese?

The town of Troutdale was super cute. We actually really loved the city of Portland as well. Eric even said that he could see himself living there, which is crazy because Eric is not usually a fan of cities. We really liked how green everything was, so many gardens and trees everywhere. We spent a day in Portland walking around the city. We went to the Saturday market on the waterfront, went for a ride on an ariel tram, went to a bookstore and went out for supper.

While we were in Troutdale we also spent a day driving along the Columbia river gorge route and looking at some breathtakingly beautiful waterfalls. We were headed to Multnomah falls, but there were so many waterfalls along the way and we stopped a hiked to a couple of them.

We stopped at Bonneville Dam and fish hatchery. The kids had fun feeding the big rainbow trout and seeing “Herman” the enourmous sturgeon. We didn’t have as much time to explore the dam as we would have liked, since it was almost 5:00 and they were closing soon.