Western Wedding Adventures

On Sunday, we went to Mass at Resurrection Church. It took us twenty minutes to get there, and it was the closest church to us. There apparently aren't many Catholics in Portland. I looked it up, Portland is 15% Catholic. In western Pennsylvania, I could probably drive to 7 or 8 different Catholic churches in a twenty minute span. The largest group in the Portland area identifies as "unaffiliated", with 64% considering themselves to be in that category. After church, we drove downtown to the legendary, independent bookstore called Powell's City of Books.  The bookstore is the largest new and used independent bookstore in the world. Apparently it started as one small store, then when the building next to it became available, they purchased it and expanded. As other buildings became available, they continued to expand until the bookstore eventually occupied an entire city block.  The different genres of books are contained in different, color-coded rooms.  There is also...

On Saturday, we made one last stop before heading back to our campground in Portland. We stopped at the Cranberry Museum in Long Beach, Washington. Of course we did! Two people from Cranberry Twp. would have to stop at a Cranberry Museum.  The museum had a gift shop. We bought a few of their products to sample: some fresh cranberries, some home made cranberry ice cream, and some unsweetened dried cranberries. When Joe went to purchase the dried cranberries, the lady at the cash register said to him, "Oh, you don't want to buy that. You're not gonna like it. They taste like shoe leather." She makes a great salesperson!  The museum also had a "working cranberry farm", some cranberry bogs, behind the museum, which we were able to walk through after visiting the museum. Ocean Spray buys cranberries from this farm for their products. The bogs contained flags which marked the different varieties of cranberries. Cranberry bog After leaving the Cranberry Museum and ...

After we left Astoria, we crossed a bridge over to Washington state as we continued to explore the coast. We continued to see some nice coastal views. We drove to Cape Disappointment State Park. Okay, a place with that name needs an explanation. The story goes something like this: A captain by the name of John Meares sailed along the coast of Oregon searching for the mouth of the Columbia River. Even though the river was there, he failed to recognize it and so registered his disappointment by giving it this epithet.    We walked on a path to see the Cape Disappointment Light House and we saw some nice views along the way, especially a cove called Deadman's Cove. Deadman's Cove A different view of the Cove When we arrived at the lighthouse, we saw some fantastic views (you might say the views did not disappoint.) This lighthouse is the oldest lighthouse in the state of Washington that is still active.  After the lighthouse, we continued our walk to the Lewis and Clark Inte...

On Saturday, we took a drive to the northwest corner of Oregon and into the southwest corner of Washington state. Along the way, we noticed this sign:  Yikes! We've lived in areas of hurricane danger and blizzards, but I don't think I would want to live in a tsunami hazard zone. Our drive took us very near the coast (in fact, we went through a city called Seaside) and we had occasional views of the Pacific Ocean. We continued to see lots of places that grow and sell berries and fruits. Many places were advertising organic blueberries, fresh raspberries, and apples. We also saw a place that advertised their jerky. Now I've seen many kinds of jerky, the most common, of course, being beef jerky. But I've also seen turkey, pork, chicken, bacon, and I've even seen alligator jerky in Louisiana. But I've never seen the kind advertised here: Vegan Jerky. Since the word jerky means "dried, salted meat", how does Vegan fit the definition of jerky?  We drove thro...

On Friday, we drove north along I-5 through Oregon. We continued to have nice scenery along the way, with the mountains keeping us company to the east. Much of the scenery here was golden hills, reminiscent of California. When we drove through Salem, we took a short detour to view the state capitol building. We have now seen 49 of the 50 state capitol buildings. We hope to see number 50, Olympia, when in Washington. Oregon State Capitol Building, Salem We continued north to Portland, where we would be staying for the weekend. We intended to drive on I-5 the entire way, but due to an accident on I-5, we detoured through some back roads - which given our propensity for back road travel, was okay with us. It gave us a chance to drive through the heart of the Willamette Valley. The Willamette Valley is a 150 mile long valley, and the Willamette River flows through the entire length.  Due to the Willamette River as well as many other waterways in the Valley, the soil is extremely fertil...