we spent turkey day in oregon. that state seems to be popping into my life a lot lately. i had previously not been conscious of anyone in my sphere of existence having any connection to that northwest corner of the states. but within the past year, i've met two people who grew up in oregon and now know two couples who have made the cross country move from the peach state to the...beaver state? funny how that is.
of course, one of those couples is my sister-in-law, jessica, and her husband, brandon. since they have planned to return to georgia over christmas and couldn't make it for thanksgiving (plane tickets aren't cheap as we all know), jonathan and i decided to make use of the flying priveledges we have and purchase some discounted tickets for a thanksgiving vacation in oregon.
of course, travelling on standby isn't the least stressful way to travel, so we had made plans to fly out well before the influx of holiday travellers descended upon the airports. we booked our flight for tuesday morning at 6:40 am. we arrived at the airport well ahead of time, groggy of course. i won't go into all the details as i have in the past with all the drama standby travling causes, but as usual, we almost didn't get on and as late-comers kept making their way to the desk AFTER last call it was looking pretty hopeless until we finally got our seat assignments.
we made our way outside to board our tiny jet plane that would carry us from greensboro to atlanta. we settled in our seats and waited. but, of course, things can't go that smoothly. we wait and wait. then the pilot notifies us that there is something wrong with the cockpit chair and we must deboard the plane. already 25 minutes after scheduled departure, we were realizing that we very well may not make our 8:55 flight out of atlanta to portland.
after they wasted another 20 minutes or so, we all boarded the plane again and ended up making it to atlanta just as our connecting flight was taking off. of course, i wasn't suprised. we looked at a number of options, but in the end we decided to just take the next direct flight to Portland...8 hours later.
lucky for us, my parents were spending the day in atlanta anyway, so they picked us up from the airport and we spend the majority of the wait with them. eventually we made it to portland.
our first full day in oregon, we spent exploring the coast. i love sight seeing and seeing waves crash against big cliffs was at the top of my to see list. we had an unexpectedly sunny day. unfortunately on the way up the winding mountainous roads, a suv that was trying to pass us skidded across some black ice, swerved and srieked across the road and took a nose dive into the ditch and up the hill slightly into some trees. it was quite scary, being the only serious accident i've ever seen (hopefully the last) and the fact that none of us had a cell phone signal to call 911. jessica and i wanted to make sure they were alright and attempted to cross the road...we both 
slipped and fell on our butts in the middle of the road on the same black ice. some locals told us told us we should get back in the car and move on since it wasn't safe...they took care of it from there i guess. i think the driver was okay because i saw them open their car door and get out.aside from that, we enjoyed the scenery...lots of green mossy trees and light shining though the trunks and branches. very pretty.
our first official stop was at the tillamook cheese factory. we indlulged ourselves in samples, tried to educate ourselves in the cheesemaking process, and guessed at what exactly the factory workers were doing down there. i'll tell you what, though. they make a heck of a lot of cheese!
after enjoying some delicious ice cream at tillamook, we continued our drive to the coast. We stopped at cape meares and i got to cross the whole waves crashing against cliffs thing off my to see list! it was quite spectacular and, of course, gorgeous. we were so happy to have a sunny day to get such a lovely view of everything! there isn't much more to say...pictures can do the rest for me.
next, we hit the beach. but not in the bikinis and flip flop kind of style. on our drive along the coast, we stopped at a couple of beaches to look at the scenery. rocky beaches are definately not what you see in your florida and southern beaches. but its a cool element to add to the scene for sure. this is our album cover for our next cd....
these next few are from canon beach...
jonathan claims this as his first true opportunity to watch a sunset. i'm a little skeptic to believe this, but its a romantic statement ;). of course, it was really amazing, as you can see. it seemed like everyone on the beach owned a dog. we enjoyed watching the dogs chase the seagulls...and eachother. we came across and adorable little dog that reminded me a lot of my childhood dog, maggie. he was a havanese, which is related to the bichon frise. i want one. :)the true challenge of the trip was thanksgiving day. this was mine and jessica's first thanksgiving without our mom preparing all the yumminess we remember from years past. our first time preparing the huge meal by ourselves. now, i've been cooking some pretty simple things, but this was truly the first trial for that. jessica, with the aid of her mom on the phone all day, and i prepared the turkey, struggling with it as you would expect. it was heavy, huge, and akward to move. we didn't know where the giblets were, we didn't know how to insert the thermometer correctly, we didn't know a lot of things. but we certainly learned and all turned out okay. we made pies, sweet potatoes, cornbread, stuffing...you know, all the typical fixings. it turned out a success. since jonathan was in bed all day sick, i had to carve the turkey, too!
on friday we explored the river region. multnomah falls was by far the most intriguing of the falls we saw...it looked like it was straight out of a lord of the rings scene or something. a little further down the road we went onto a trail and hiked about 5 miles round trip to see about five other falls along the way. we packed a picnic lunch of turkey sandwiches and chips and enjoyed it while watching the water rush down the biggest of the falls.
on saturday we just spent the day relaxing and hanging out around portland. we checked out a mansion on top of a hill that overlooked the city of portland. it was a bit drizzly, so no such luck on seeing a view of mt. hood. but we were able to see a rainbow at least!
we took monday to drive up to seattle and check it out...we were on the west coast anyway, right? we ended up leaving pretty late...so we didn't arrive in seattle until about 4 pm or so. it was fun to check out a city you've always heard about...of course, we made it to the space needle (didn't go up because even though you couldn't see anything because of fog, they had no discounts on the $30 ticket). but it was a great chance to wander around and see the fish market and the bay.
and that pretty much sums up our west coast adventure! we had high hopes of skiing on mt. hood, but since the weather was mostly 60 degrees and drizzly, it didn't work out for us. hopefully one day we'll be able to make it back up there.
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