We started out the weekend with a minor league baseball game, The Portland Beavers. Sheldon has been watching baseball on T.V. and had the idea to make a sign. I think it worked, a news camera man filmed them cheering and holding up their sign. (He has picked up a few other things from watching MLB, for example during a game he pointed the bat to center field... kind of like Babe Ruth, and he once crossed himself before stepping into the batters box.)
Taylor lasted until the 8th inning!
Anderson's please notice the glove and ball he brought to the game, and the Mariners hat...I think he is a convert.
After the game we watched the city put on a great fireworks show, to kick off the Rose Festival. And we tested the outdoor quilt that we made over Memorial Weekend.
Saturday we went up the Columbia River Gorge to check out some waterfalls. I had three hikes planned but we only made it to the first one.
Wahkeena Falls
Here is a shot of a street in downtown Portland they closed in preparation for the Twilight Parade...another Rose Festival activity.
Taylor took this action photo.
We got there three hours early, and had lots of time to kill.
This was our first experience with the twilight parade and I had no idea how popular this event was. They estimated 250,000 spectators came to watch the parade, and after all our waiting we only made it halfway through.
Our first family vacation of the summer! We drove 7 hours south to California.
This is a picture of the kids playing around at Crescent Beach on the way to our campsite.
This is Big Tree.
We went to see the tallest tree in the world located in Tall Tree Grove it stands 379.5 feet tall. It took quite an effort to get there, they make you get a special permit, combination pass, and a nice little drive and hike to get down there. We descended 800 feet to get down to the grove, and hiked 4 miles total.
One bag of marshmallows wasn't enough.
After doing some research I wanted to go on another hike through the old growth redwoods from our campsite out to the ocean. We thought if the kids could handle a 4 mile hike...why not a 10 mile hike? (In retrospect I could give you several reasons why this was not a good idea...so could my family, but at the time it seemed like a good idea.) We started the hike and realized that it took 1 & 1/2 miles to get to the trail head, then we read that the trail had been rerouted through another trail and this added 1/2 mile each way. So at the end of the day we ended up going on a 14 mile hike. We ended up hiking ALL DAY, poor kids. Kitt was so tired and hungry he skipped out on our dinner of hot dogs and mac and cheese and drove into town for a burger.
We didn't spot any whales, but this is part of their migration route.
Of course we had to drive through a tree!
