Arriving in Oregon

We arrived in Portland early in the afternoon, so we had some time to take in a few sights. We drove straight to these waterfalls: Multnomah Falls, not far outside of Portland. It was a really pretty drive. It was amazing because from the airport, you don't really see much "city" because there are so many trees. We finally saw the downtown area, which has a cool sky tram thing we wanted to try. There was also a cool building we think was the convention center. We also went over a really big cool bridge.

Already off on a tangent....So Darin researched and these falls are considered a "must" in Oregon. They are so pretty. It is actually 2 falls, but in some pictures it looks like one. I was taken in by the beauty...the earth is amazing. It was so worth the time to go look.

We walked up to the bridge to get a closer look at the falls. Jordan ran ahead of us the whole time, meanwhile Landon took his time to look at all kinds of things at his eye level. I didn't mind walking with Lanny because I took lots of pics. It was sooo pretty.
I loved this log at the bottom of the falls. So Beautiful!

I was instantly in love with how green everything is. There is moss growing on the trees and it is so cool. Oregon is simply gorgeous!!
The boys found a fun tree on our walk down the path after seeing the waterfall. There was a little pond area at the bottom with lots of people playing in the water, which was freezing. The kids wanted to play, but unfortunately for them we had no towels. Next time:)
Next we went the The Bonneville Dam and a fish hatchery. It was cool because they let you drive up this close. We drove by the huge locks as well. The had a visitors center with windows to watch the fish going up the fish ladders. Darin laughs at me because I didn't know what a "fish ladder" was.
The fish hatchery was really cool as well. There were ponds with tons of fish one sturgeon who was 70 years old, 10 feet long, 450 lbs, and he was HUGE!! It was so beautiful-the grounds and flowers were so pretty. We also saw the coolest water fountain we have ever seen-there was a statue in the middle and spouts on all 3 corners. The kids loved that they could all drink at the same time!!
Spencer loved that he could get his own drink. This is that last shot in an awesome series I shot of him drinking.
The had a couple ponds of baby Salmon. Here they are trying to jump upstream. Fascinating-we stood there forever just watching them jump.
We made it to our hotel and were so tired. The kids were overtired and immediately started jumping on the beds. Before long the front desk called (twice) to tell us to pipe down. Apparently the people in the next room were trying to go to bed...at 8:00pm....whatever. It took a while, but finally we got them quiet and went to sleep.

I got home and there were 911 pictures on my memory card-after deleting some on the plane!! (good thing I have an 8mb memory card) I have since deleted quite a few since seeing them on the computer. So don't be surprised if my future posts about the trip are overloaded with pics:)