Vacation (Part 3)

Day 9

We had to leave my grandma's which was really hard.  I miss her a lot and she is such a wonderful person.  It makes me sad we see her so little.  Grandma's dogs were sad that Jason left, they really liked him. 

We were not sure what we were going to do when we left.  We had planned on going on a hike around a bunch of waterfalls, but I confused Silver Falls State Park with Golden and Silver Falls, which is a different park.  So I got directions to the wrong park.  I was not sure if we could find the other park, but after my grandma told us that Golden and Silver falls was not that exciting, we decided what the heck and decided to try and find the park with 10 waterfalls.  Boy am I glad that we did.  Jason found a travel kiosk which had directions to the park and we found it easily.  We parked and started for the hike.  Almost immediatly we heard a waterfall and not too far from the start of the hike was the first falls.  It was amazing, partly because we were able to walk behind it.  That was so cool.  It was one of the neatest things that I have done. 

We then started to hike to the other waterfalls.  There are a couple of different hikes that you can do.  One is two miles and you see two waterfalls.  You can do the five mile which you see seven of the waterfalls.  Then there is an eight mile hike were you see all ten.  We decided to do the five or at least see if we could.  After we got to the point where we could decide if we should go on to do the eight mile hike, we decided we were not tired and decided to try the whole thing.  We actually only got to see nine of the waterfalls because one of them was on a side trail and we missed it but nine out of ten is not bad.  Also the hike was so beautiful.  We hiked by a river and along the trail there were little waterfalls, trees, and moss covered rocks dripping water.  We are going to do it again because it was so fun and just so great, next time we want to bring lunch to eat on the hike.  I don't know if we hiked eight miles because we accidently took the wrong trail and kind of went in a weird circle, but we did go at least 6 miles and probably close to 8.  (Sorry for the picture dump, but this was one of my favorite parts of our trip)

After we were done hiking we went up to Portland and checked into our hotel and ate dinner.  We were pretty tired from hiking but it was worth it.

Day 10

We spent the day in Portland.  We wanted to go to OMSI to pick up a cool present for my nephew, but of course they were closed on Mondays.  Jason wanted to go the Japanese Gardens, which were pretty, but I always feel underwhelmed.  We then went to the zoo which was pretty fun.  We then drove to Vancouver because we promised my nephew we would get him a Washington state keychain.  We drove all over stupid Vancouver for two hours and could not find one keychain.  We were so frustrated.  We then went to a mall and did some shopping and ate dinner at a mexican resturant. 

Day 11

We headed back to Idaho, but on the way we stopped at Multnomah Falls because we always look at it from the freeway, but Jason has never seen it up close.  The falls looked beautiful and we were both glad that we stopped. 

I always have a hard time leaving Oregon because I think of it as my home so whenever we leave I get really sad.  Well just to show how great Oregon is we stopped in Pendelton to get gas at an Indian reservation and I found a Washington keychain.  We could not believe it but it proves that you can get everything you need in Oregon, ha, ha.  When we got to Idaho the kids were excited to wish Jason a happy birthday and we went to dinner at Outback steak house.  Elizabeth was so nice and made Jason a birthday cake and we stayed up late playing Dominion.

Last Day

  We were able to spend some more time with Elizabeth's family and we went to the Boise aquarium with the kids and Elizabeth.  It was really small, but the kids had fun.  We then drove back to Utah, which is not an exciting drive.  We did hit a lot of bugs on the way, which was pretty gross.  So I guess it is back to reality and having responsibilities.  It was nice to leave them behind and have a wonderful vacation.  I can't wait to go back to Oregon.  I think that we are still planning on getting a beach house when we retire, so I am really looking forward to when we retire.