What I've been doing: I've been working on writing and had a crisis this last year that put all of my goals on hold. And the stress actually sent me to the ER. Never been there before for myself even though I had been there 3 months in a row for before that for someone else in my family. I had a stress event on my heart and have been slowly recovering ever since. That is a long story saga of its own I don't want to retell here. But my heart is okay. My blood pressure is all over the place but mostly fine when I'm chill and I'm ready to find my focus again.
My other love next to family and writing is traveling and photography. We tripped to Disneyland in January. I'll blog about that later.
Today's blog will be about our latest trip to Portland and the Oregon Coast.
Portland is just over a 7 hour drive from Boise. The hubby and I decided a couple weeks ago we would celebrate our 25th anniversary by going that direction. I mean it was maybe under 2 weeks ago. So I made a plan and by golly, everything worked out beautifully.
Now I've made cross country trips with my kids. I love the fact you can look anything up and plan a trip by doing your research long before you get in the car. Looking at maps of cities you want to visit can give you some amazing insight as to what is in the town even better than just doing a Google search. I love those Road Atlases you can get at Wal-Mart. You can look up the cities and read all the little words and see if there is interesting things you want to see that you had no idea existed there until you viewed the map. So I scanned Portland. My husband had an idea of his own.
Here is how our journey started. We left when he got home from work Thursday night, gained an hour on the drive and made it to the Super 8 by the airport by midnight. I searched motels all over town and looked at each website and choose this one because of reviews, low-cost, nicely renovated rooms and of course availability. It also looked easiest to find while tired in an unfamiliar city. I checked out a Motel 6's reviews that was just coming into town and several people said that it seemed like they were in a questionable part of town so that turned me off. The Super 8 it was and I was not disappointed. Super easy to find, nice room, lots of fast food nearby, nice area. Bonus- Ikea was right on the other side of the freeway along with a really nice, recently built, enormous shopping area. It didn't bother me at all we were staying 2 nights and this motel. Also, motels can really gross me out in a hurry.
Our first day we started with the hubby's activity. We drove by the Evergreen Air and Space Museum years ago on our way to the Oregon Coast. I only remember it being one building back then. It is about an hour and a half from north Portland on one of the roads you can take to get to the Oregon Coast. Now it is 3 main buildings with an indoor water park off to the side. With an airplane on top of the building with slides coming out.
We didn't go there. I thought the admission was a bit pricey at $25.00 a person. It was the thing to do without the extra expense bringing the girls. My husband was in his happy place. He loves WWII airplanes and they had plenty. The Spruce Goose is the main reason why the whole museum was even built, the first building was made specifically to house the huge wooden plane.
Under the wings are numerous other planes. From Orville and Wilbur Wright's first contraptions to modern day military aircraft. I realized I enjoyed looking at the planes in the comfortable climate controlled building, I've been to my share of airshows and took no pleasure looking at planes when it's so hot out. I took lots of pictures of propellers and unique views of the planes with the intention of making something for my husband's birthday at the end of this week. I think there's nothing cooler than having pictures on the wall of something you love that you actually saw with your own eyes. We will see if he thinks the same. We payed an extra $4.00 a person to tour a B-17. My hubby likes that plane more than I ever knew so it was a special experience for him.
That high admission to get in was probably worth it in the end. We got to see a movie in the center building. Huge Imax looking screen as we watched a National Geographic movie about fighter pilot training. We then went to the Space part of the museum. More of the military fighter jets were in there with a lot of rocket and space travel information. I've been to NASA south of Houston before so a lot of the space exploration stuff was a lot like what you can see there. For those who haven't been to NASA before, you will be more impressed.
For food at the museum, they had concessions in each building. I bought a fountain drink in the first building. They had mostly snacks there, nothing substantial. The lady that gave me my small $2 cup said it was refillable. So I refilled it after the movie in the middle building. We didn't buy popcorn there but it sure smelled good. In the third building, they had a cafe. It was very nice. A little more upscale with real plates. We ordered cheese burgers at $8 a plate, with fries, and they were very good, restaurant style. Well worth the money.
We were there on a Friday and the museums weren't over crowded with people at all. It was very pleasant, easy to look at all the aircraft, and very friendly and knowledgeable staff.
So this was the first leg of our day. I'll save the rest of the places we visited for my next post.
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