Multnomah Falls

One of the most amazing parts of our trip was hiking to the top to Multnomah Falls. The boys made it 3/4 of a mile before they started whining. They were also encouraged by the many other hikers we saw along the way. I actually think that Mom & Dad were even more encouraged by the other hikers once the whining started! We started early in the morning so that it would be cool for the entire trip to the top. It did stay cool. We saw a slug on the way (not something we see a lot of in Nevada) and were taunted by a crazy field mouse who would scamper in front of us, but eluded Jen's attempts to photograph it.

Swimming

It turned out that we brought our Nevada weather to the Pacific Northwest. It was over 100 degrees every day we were there. So we spent a lot of time swimming, playing in the sprinklers, and enjoying some cold treats. I'm not sure the boys will ever be same, after all the ice cream that they ate a Grandpa Bill's house.

Picking cherries

One of the greatest parts about being from Oregon is the amazing produce that we have available to us. In fact we happened to try to orchestrate our trip around cherry harvest. So, seeing as there were some cherries that didn't make the size requirement to go to market this year, we took the boys out to see how great they taste straight off the tree.

Bonneville Dam

After we did not find sturgeon in The Dalles, we decided to head to Bonneville to see what we could find there. We found so many different kinds of fish! The boys were fascinated by the fish counters room. The sat there for quite awhile trying to keep track of all the different fish they saw. There were lots of steelhead, and lampreys. There were even a couple of salmon. They boys thought being a fish counter looked like a fun job, but not nearly as fun as being a paleontologist. Tim decided the next time we come to Oregon, he'll do some fishing.

Wonderworks

When Jen was a little girl she used to go to Wonderworks children's museum and play. So on our recent trip to The Dalles, we took the kids. There was a lot of fun to be had!

Grandpa Bill's Lab

The boys had a great time looking in the super microscopes in Grandpa Bill's lab. In fact, it almost felt like home because there were so many pictures of them taped around the microbiology hoods! When Jen was a little girl, she used to call the hospital "the pits" (as in cherry pits...) because her Daddy spent so much time there. It looks like he still does. The boys got to looks at some slide of blood, however, and that was very cool.

Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

We went to the new (to us) Columbia Gorge Discovery Center. It is a wonderful facility full of all of the treasures of the Pacific Northest. It even has a room dedicated just to Wasco County. Grandpa Bill even made it to the movies there with his excellent work on samples collected from the 1984 Salmonella outbreak in TD.

Most of the exhibits were not friendly to touching, but the boys loved playing pirate in the explorers room. They managed to find a little bit of fun.

We got the boys very excited to see some sturgeon...only to not be able to find any in The Dalles. We had to go to Bonneville Dam for that experience.

OMSI fun

We just spent our first wonderful week in Oregon! The first excursion was to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. We had a great time not only testing our hearing and learning about why we need to protect it, but we also got to play with our cousins, Sam & Riley who came to see us. It was so much fun!! We got to see a bunch of cool animals and we played in the science playground for hours.

The perfect end to the perfect day? Good friends, Pizza and a tent in the backyard....and lots of ice cream, courtesy of Grandpa Bill.