Trip to OR in August - Part 2

On Monday morning the smoke didn't seem quite as bad.  We played tennis and basketball and went swimming at the indoor pool.  After lunch we went to Oregon Tech, our alma mater.  We checked to see if we could get a tour and sure enough they hooked us up with a current student and had a "swag bag" for us as well.  Our tour guide started us at the campus bookstore which was expanded since our time there.  It was about to close so we browsed and bought a few things.  We saw the dining area (also expanded), the Residence Hall (Jim lived there 3 years!) and then onto the newest building on campus.  The newest building is the Martha Anne Dow Center for Health Professions and we got to see inside the Ultrasound scanning lab, which was beautiful.  We continued on through campus going in each building and reminiscing about which classes we had in each.  Emmett was impressed with the turf soccer field and the gym just got a brand new floor.  It was a great tour and we were pretty impressed with the bag of goodies they gave us.

Ultrasound lab

After our tour we drove around town to show the boys places we had lived, our church, etc.  Things had changed, but not a lot.  The biggest change was the ghetto grocery store that had great prices had a new building.  It was pretty nice inside and still had pretty good prices.  We got some groceries and went back to make dinner and watch a movie.  We all watched Peter Rabbit together and it was much funnier than I was expecting.

On Tuesday we went on a bit of a nature walk by the lake and played at a playground in Moore Park.  Jim proposed to me in Moore Park, but it was January and we were snowshoeing.  It was smoky and buggy and hot, so we went back to the condo.  We had lunch and after a bit Jim's parents arrived.  We visited with them and then our friends who just moved to Southern Oregon arrived.  They live nearly 2 hours away, but she was excited to come to the "big town" with a Walmart.  Jess and her 3 boys swam with us all afternoon, unfortunately Chris was busy with his new job getting ready for the school year and couldn't join us.  We all went out to Pizza for dinner and it was great!

Wednesday Jim's parents came with us to Crater Lake.  We had been nervous about smoke, and there was plenty, but the visibility was at least good enough to see across the lake.  We watched the informational video at the visitors center and then drove around the lake, stopping along the way at various overlooks.  We had lunch and the kids needed nearly constant snacks in the car.  We went clockwise and when we were almost all the way around we did some hiking.  We did the Pinnacles Trail to see some crazy rock formations.  Then we did the Plaikni Falls Trail.

The Pinnacles

Plaikni Falls

It was a full day and we managed to make it back to the condo to BBQ hamburgers for dinner.  We put the kids to bed and Jim and I finished our third "grown-up" movie of the trip.

Thursday morning we had a big breakfast with Jim's parents and packed up.  After I got our suitcases packed I took the kids to play tennis and swimming and Jim did the rest of the packing.  We checked out at noon and drove over to OIT since it is also Jim's parents' alma mater.  We did a little more shopping in the bookstore and and looked around a bit.  We had some lunch in the car and drove to Salt Creek Falls on Willamette Pass.  We hiked around a little bit to see the falls and played in a creek.  The boys enjoyed walking on the logs in the forest and we took some family pictures.  They also enjoyed the huckleberries.  We stopped in Pleasant Hill at Dairy Queen for dinner and continued on to Jim's parents' house.

On Friday I went up to Mount Hood with my mom to pick my brother up at camp.  We also got to see my Aunt Dee at her house and we ate lunch with her.  Meanwhile my guys all went fishing with Jim's parents.  They went to a lake near the coast that Emmett had some great fishing luck on.  It wasn't quite as successful for them, but they all at least caught a fish and they ate 2 of Ezra's fish for dinner.

We left the kids with Jim's parents that evening and went to Jim's 20 year high school reunion.  It was held at a one of his classmate's homes and she lives really near my parents.  It was a fairly small group (about 12 from his class plus spouses) and it was fun to catch up.  It was interesting to hear what everyone did for a living and about how many kids people had and how old their kids were.

Saturday morning we went to Silver Creek State Park and met up with my parents, my brother, and my Aunt Diane and Uncle Michael.  It was great to catch up with my Aunt and Uncle and it is a beautiful place.  It started getting quite crowded and I was starting to feel very done with our trip as a whole.  We were all feeling ready to be back home, although my kids of course wanted to be on vacation forever.  We also got to stop in and visit Jim's grandma.  Emmett played us some songs on her electric keyboard, and showed his brothers how to make it do all sorts of funny sound effects. They found all her toys, played in her yard and picked blackberries.

We went back to Jim's parents' for dinner and were joined by Beth, Aaron, Winn and Audrey.  We spent most of the evening getting our stuff packed up and as compact as possible for our trip home the next day. It's always a little stressful to me when I start seeing the piles of things we need to fit in the car...cooler full of blueberries, various birthday gifts for our 2 September birthdays, all Emmett's stuff from the summer...but Jim always does a great job fitting it all in.  Our trip home went smooth and we got home early enough to get mostly completely unpacked.  It was good to be home and we were in for a busy week!