Oregon

Our friend Shirley lives in Salem, OR and spends the summer on her sailboat at our marina a few slips down. Every year, she goes on a month long trip with friends to Southern California for some warm weather and R &R. She graciously offered her house for us to use while she was out. We packed up the car and eagerly headed south to Salem. Salem is the State Capital and is centrally located, making for lots of fun day trips. First off, we mulched Shirley’s plant beds to help out with the spring chores.

We went hiking to tons of cool places. The “trail of ten falls” was a short drive away, it was entirely cool! The trail did in fact, go past 10 waterfalls, all of which were quite impressive. The trail looped behind several of the falls which was neat. Erik was a good sport and posed for a photo while getting soaked. Everything is covered in moss and ferns.

We also hiked at the Columbia river gorge to a viewpoint overlooking the river.

The hiking along the coast of Oregon was too beautiful to describe. We also were able to do quite a bit of tide-pooling and got some bird watching in.

Salem is in the Willamette Valley which is a major vineyard and wine region. We went wine tasting, as well as cider tasting. Yum!

We were also fortunate to get to listen to several live music performances at local bars.

It was nice being able to relax in front of Shirley’s fire place.

Our month is now up and we had a great time exploring Oregon and chilling out at Shirley’s house. Big thanks to Shirley for sharing her cozy house with us!