Day 31 (Sunday, July 25th) Portland Oregon

On Friday and Saturday we drove up from San Francisco to Portland. We finished the trip in Portland early Saturday. The drive was uneventful, but particularly scenic because we were driving right down the middle of the Cascades. It was incredibly gorgeous! We usually had beautiful mountains for background, lush pine forests surrounding us, and the river alongside us. The road mostly follows the river and goes between the big peaks, so there were only a few large inclines to get over and the drive wasn't too bad. The scenery and the road were certainly different than the deserts of Nevada and the central valley of California.

After settng up camp on Saturday in a very pretty campground, we drove over to Kim's uncle's house in Lake Oswego, just south and east of Portland. He and his wife Penny have a brautiful home right on the bank of the Willamette River. A lot of Steve and Penny's family was there and it was great catching up with them; the boys were five and two years old the last time we were here. Steve and Penny set out a delicious dinner for us, but not before Jake and Tyler got to experience tubing on the river. Steve has a two-seater tube that he tows behind his motorboat. He let the boys get used to being bounced around and then sped up and took them outside the wake. You should have seen their faces! I was laughing so hard and the boat was bouncing so hard that only about half of my pictures even came out! Steve has promised them some more tubing for tomorrow and the boys can hardly wait.

Dinner was a Koho salmon that Steve had caught himself. My mouth still waters just thinking about it. It was delicious! Steve's brother, Bill (another of Kim's uncles), drove up from Baja, Mexico and he arrived only an hour after we did, so it was an even bigger reunion than we'd expected. He didn't drive up just to see us, but he did time his trip so he wouldn't miss us. He also remembered to bring some ice-cold Mexican beer which I helped him drink!

On Sunday we slept in and had a leisurely breakfast and went back over to Steve and Penny's. The boys got to go out tubing twice more and although they got a fair amount of air-time, the never managed to get flipped over or thrown in the water. I'm really not sure if they were relieved or disappointed. On the other hand, Holly our Labrador retriever, was hard to keep out of the water. She'd have been willing to fetch sticks out of the river all day. She's completely in her element on the banks and in the river.

As the afternoon progressed, Steve and Penny started to get ready for their family vacation so we packed up and headed back to our trailer for a good night's sleep.

Tomorrow will be a long day of driving and being tourists. We'll be heading out to drive along the Oregon coastline. We're also going to make a side-trip to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum to see the "Spruce Goose," Howard Hughes gigantic seaplane, so it'll be a full day for us.