Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Day 25: Oregon or Bust

Well it had to happen, didn’t it.  No matter how hard we tried to keep partying along the way, the day of becoming Oregonians had to finally arrive.

But not before having a great time at Megan’s house.  Megan introduced the kids to the book & movie of The Gruffalo, which Rachel is still quoting.  She showed them how to play the game her husband invented called Squarrels and just as quickly as he could Jared bought the app.  (Yes, apparently there’s an app for that too!)  We had such fun at Megan’s & loved meeting her super nice husband who made them a yummy lunch out of shells & tomato juice.  (And who may live to regret having invited us to stop by anytime!!)

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Then, when we could delay no longer, we started for Oregon.  When we got to the welcome center in Oregon someone needed a bathroom so we pulled in, but I figured it was also a good opportunity to document this moment. 

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And lest you start to think that my kids are always cooperative for pictures, let me show you a few more that I took…

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They had a lovely rose garden at the welcome center and that made me very happy.

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Here are some of the other interesting things we saw along our way.

Tree farms:

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Lots and lots of windmills.  I love that this pic gives some perspective on how giant these are.  It was super windy in this area—I could see why they would have put the windmills there.

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For a while we thought we were driving along the worlds longest reservoir, and then we realized that we were driving along the Columbia River.  It was cool.

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Once we realized that on the other side of the Columbia River was Washington, we had to drive over the next bridge we found just far enough so we could claim that we’d been in Washington too.

As we got closer to Portland we saw these beautiful flowering plants all along the side of the road.  They were so pretty.

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As were the towering pines.

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It would make a great ending to our epic travel story if I could say next that we got to Hillsboro, were thrilled to see Russ, and lived happily ever after.  And if that’s what you want to believe, go ahead and close your browser now.

In the interest of being honest for my posterity and letting them know that I’ve had hard times and survived, I will tell you what actually happened.  I had visions of being able to blog about this last day and call it something like “Reunited, and it feels so good.”

Instead, I started crying when we passed this sign,

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and pretty much didn’t stop for the next 24 hours.  All I can say is poor Russ, thank goodness he’s a patient guy.  And that things have slowly gotten better. 

THE END

2 comments:

  1. I'm so glad to read that you finally made it!

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  2. I love the windmills, and every time we drive by them I am resurprised by how massive they are.

    We loved having you! About 2 hours after you left, Daniel asked why Rachel had to go. I told him it had been a long time since she'd been with her dad and she wanted to be with him again. Daniel said, "No, she doesn't! She wants to stay here and play with me!" (Ahh, the self-confidence of 4 year olds.) =)

    We look forward to being a pit stop for you now that we're on your way to your UT family! =)

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