Vacation with Friends: Pictures from Portland

The Columbia River as seen from the top of Multnomah Falls just outside of Portland, Oregon.  Sunday, July 15, 2012.

The second half of our two week summer vacation trip was our annual jaunt to Oregon to spend time with Carol Paez and her family.  We arrived on Friday evening, July 13 and left very early Sunday morning, July 22.

They say this is the perfect time of year to visit Portland, and indeed the weather was quite nice while we were there, though just a tad cooler than we'd expected.  Still it was comfortable, and Carol wanted to make sure we made the most of our time there.  Honestly though, I was happy just to be with friends and actually welcomed a rare opportunity to laze about and not do a whole lot of anything.

Nevertheless, we managed to fit in some Official Fun Stuff on our Oregon trip.  A recap of some of the highlights:

A classic western Oregon vista.  I took this photo on a run Sunday afternoon, July 15.

Late Sunday afternoon, July 15, Carol, Babs, the Feller, and I zipped over to one of the Portland areas key  sites for visitors, the spectacular Multnomah Falls.  Elijah was asleep in his car seat when we arrived so Babs stayed in the car with him while Carol and I hiked to the top.

Looking down from the top of Multnomah Falls.  I was terrified of dropping my cell phone, so thus I only got  this one lackluster photo of the drop.

 On Monday, Carol had to take her youngest son, "Cool Guy" to Seattle where he was meeting up with some relatives, so we were basically at home for the day.  It was a perfect Do Nothing Day!

Tuesday was much the same, though Carol and Babs took Elijah to some sort of kids park.

On Wednesday evening, we met up with Judith Edwards Schneider, our old pal from Saipan.  We missed her wedding in June, but were glad we could catch up with her and her husband Evan then. (More on that in the next entry).

We spent Thursday morning at Powell's bookstore in downtown Portland, and had a nice lunch at the Energy Bar

Friday, I took Elijah to the Portland Children's Museum while Babs and Carol had a Girls Day Out.  Photos of Elijah at the museum are up on his blog.  In the evening before sundown Babs and I caught a showing of the A Friend for the End of the World.

Sabbath, July 21, we spent the day at Oregon Camp Meeting in Gladstone (see next blog for more on how wonderfully that turned out).

The Endorsement:  The Energy Bar
The food was great and the service was outstanding.  The owner seemed to be the only person in the place at the time and he worked hard--prepping the food and drinks, taking the money, and serving us.  When he forgot one of our items and had to be reminded, he threw in a couple of huge and delicious chocolate chip cookies.  The turkey chili was delicious and the smoothies were unbeatable.  If you're looking for something light and reasonably priced at lunch check out the Energy Bar.