Oregon 2010

I took Zach to the Trailblazers/Celtic's game in Portland for his birthday.
This is the view from our seats.

We were waiting for the game to begin.
The final score! Go Celtics!
We decided to drive out to the Oregon Coast and visit the Tillamook Cheese Factory.
The Ship that is sitting outside the factory.

My husband, the farmer!
We were trying to get a photo with the Sign behind us...it kind of worked!
Stopping to take photos along the beautiful Oregon Coast.
Amazing!
Even though it is dark, I think this turned out really cute!
On the Astoria bridge crossing back into Washington. It was so tall!


We spent the weekend in Portland, OR celebrating Zach's 26th birthday. He has been wanting to see the Celtic's play for a very long time and they were having a game against the Portland Trailblazers, so we went to the game. We didn't have the best seats in the house but we sure had fun! It was an interesting game, the Trailblazers never had a chance and we helped get a few guys kicked out of the game. They were sitting right behind us and couldn't stop with the fowl language and bad attitudes. Everyone in our row (which happened to all be Celtic fans) were trying to calm them down...we finally had to resort to calling security. Other than that, it was really a lot of fun!

The next day we decided to drive out to the Oregon Coast and visit the Tillamook Cheese Factory. We sampled lots of cheese and fudge, got really thirsty and bought a huge jug of chocolate milk, which we immediately guzzled down. It was delicious! We watched them make, cut, and sort HUGE blocks of cheese, toured the rest of the factory, and read lots of interesting facts about cheese.

After we left the Factory, we decided to drive home by way of Hwy 101 North, which follows the Oregon Coast. It was a gorgeous drive and the perfect day for it! After stopping in Seaside for the Nike outlet store (which Zach loved!), we continued driving north to Astoria where we crossed the Astoria bridge back into Washington. Zach was a little nervous to drive on that bridge (he doesn't really like heights and that was a very TALL bridge).

We decided that we wanted to make our way back to I-5 to go home, the logical route would have been to drive along 6, but we thought that went to far south and we didn't want to take that long getting home. Instead, we decided to take a short cut off Hwy 101 that went straight East to meet up with I-5. This according to Google Maps on our phones, it looked like a large enough road and we didn't foresee any problems. Little did we know!

The road started off fine. It consisted of one lane each way, but it didn't seem like too many people were taking that route, so we thought it would save us time. After a few miles, we passed a sign that I just happened to read while passing. It read: Primitive Road, No warning signs. We just laughed and kept driving. A few minutes later, the nice road ended and we started driving on gravel! We thought, "okay, this can't last for too long!" so we continued to drive. Well, it turns out that it actually lasted for a very long time! After driving for miles and miles on muddy, bumpy, pothole-filled 'primitive' road, and only passing two other vehicles, we finally hit nice pavement again. We thought we were passed the worst of it. We were so naive! After a few miles, we again passed a sign that read: Primitive Road, no warning signs. We had no choice but to continue...there was no other route! So we kept driving along the bumpy, muddy, pothole filled road. It was a very long drive! On this stretch of logging road, the only vehicles we passed were quads, and here we were in my little Toyota Camry! We lost all phone reception, Zach's phone died and we could no longer could depend on our google map. We were driving blind and the sun was now setting!

Thankfully we finally made it back to civilization and were able to get reception on my phone (after being turned around and driving in circles for about an hour near Rochester). We eventually found our way to I-5 and from there it was smooth sailing! We have never been so grateful for smooth pavement and the comforts of home! We decided that if there was a next time, we would follow the rest of traffic and take the longer way home! :)

Overall, we really had a great trip! We are just very grateful to be home safe.