Driving through the Willamette Valley and breaking down in Grant's Pass, Oregon

Yeah, so the Willamette Valley is gorgeous to tool through, but try REALLY hard not to break down in Grant's Pass...there's not much to do there. Trust me.

Easy St is off to the right...



There are several Weeds in OR, this here is the way to "Central Weed."



Right about at Grant's Pass, the car started doing some funny stuff, like puttering the way a car does when it's running out of gas. I didn't want to push it and end up damaging it worse, so we pulled into a Holiday Inn parking lot and called up AAA and got our SECOND tow of the trip (the first being in Durango, if you'll recall, Dear Reader).





Grant's Pass -- "It's the Climate!"

Visiting Carson's Grandparents in Eugene, Oregon

We popped into Eugene, OR to visit with Carson's grandparents. It was a nice relaxing time and a great visit.

Shell & Jan, plus Jake the puppy!



Lookin' good, Jake, FETCH!



Eugene has Geese.



The sun shines on Eugene. Oh, and it has a river.



It was great meeting the fam for me and seeing them again for Carson. They're not TOO far away, so we hope to see them again soon!

Images of Portland, Oregon

Portland was another city that was on our short-list of places we were thinking about moving to. Honestly, I loved it and if I knew a few people that lived there already I may well have voted to stay. It was gorgeous, had great public transportation, incredible nature surroundings, and the the best book stores ever (other than maybe Strand in NYC, of course). Everyone there was friendly and warm, the city is well planned out, and the restaurant/foodie/craft beer brewing scene there is fantastic, plus they've got wine flowing in from the Willamette Valley right next door.

We stayed at Ace Hotel, great. Ate at Le Pigeon and the McMenamin's Kennedy School, fantastic. Chilled at the Jupiter Hotel bar, fun. Drank at Portland City Grill on the top floor of the tallest building in town (and at a bunch of other places), excellent. Spent a bunch of time browsing in Powell's Book Store, which is awesome. I liked it, I liked it a lot.



It's not a huge city, and certainly not very tall. Like I mentioned above, we did hang out at Portland City Grill, a piano bar at the top of the tallest buildings in town, which was great.





2,443 miles from Times Square, sigh.



Mt. Hood looms on the horizon.



Powell's Book Store. Note the Elvis impersonator singing out front.



Turkey Vulture at the Audubon Sanctuary, where we hiked some trails and met various ravens, vultures, and other birds.



A couple random shots...





Bye Portland, we loved you!

Images of Seattle, Washington

Seattle was on our short-list of cities we were considering moving to. While it didn't end up that we wanted to stay, we did think Seattle rocked.

Oh, and let me just say that, yes I know there are things in Seattle other than the Space Needle. It's just that I like a bunch of my pics of it, sorry!

I'll just get all the Space Needle pics out of the way first...



An obvious shot that I saw in the NYT recently --





At some point we ended up right by it...because I just HAD to go to the Science Fiction Museum & Hall of Fame! It was awesome and you should go there, too, by the way.





Ok. Moving on...

If you thought cops on Segways was interesting, wait 'till you see these bad boys.



Seattle has AWESOME parks!



We really loved the Pike Place Market, it'd almost be worth living in Seattle just for that.









One thing Seattle has is insane traffic. And also Mt. Ranier!



Like the sign says, head this way to Portland, OR, that's our next stop!

The Grand Coulee Dam & Spokane, WA

Well, there are so many shots of Glacier National Park, that I'm still working through them, however, I have finished working on shots of the Northwest so let's get them up here!

After staying in Glacier National for a night we headed back to Missoula, MT and then on to Seattle, WA. That's a heck of a long drive though, so we decided to stay in Spokane, WA on the way. Then we figured we may as well hit the Grand Coulee Dam on our way out of Spokane the next day.

First we had to drive through a bit of Montana and through the top of Idaho.



This is the entire town of Haugan, MT, I believe:



We did not get any potatoes:




We made it Spokane, Washington, no problem. It's a very pretty little city.







Another beautiful carousel, who knew that so many cities had one?



They have a gondola that's not really worth doing, I would say.



Now, would you believe that Spokane, WA has a hotel that is considered to be one of the world's finest and certainly most ornately and lavishly appointed? Well it does, the incredible Davenport Hotel. Check this baby out.





Every surface is encrusted with decoration and carvings:



Infinite mirrors:



The lobby:



Before leaving the next morning we hit up Frank's Diner, which is in an old railroad car and is awesome. If you go, get the biscuits and sausage gravy, they do them AWESOME here!



The Grand Coulee Dam is a biggun'. Here's what Wikipedia says about it: "Grand Coulee Dam is a hydroelectric gravity dam on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington. In the United States, it is the largest electric power producing facility and the largest concrete structure. It is the fourth largest producer of hydroelectricity in the world...The Grand Coulee Dam is almost a mile long at 5223 feet (1586 m). The spillway is 1,650 feet(503 m) wide. At 550 feet (168 m), it is taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza; all the pyramids at Giza could fit within its base. Its hydraulic height of 380 feet (115 m) is more than twice that of Niagara Falls. There is enough concrete to build a four-foot wide, four-inch deep sidewalk twice around the equator." It was built between 1933-1944, as one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's public works program. Check it out --





It's a huge dam, but not super interesting to look at...plus the car was smelling like it was burning oil so I was anxious to move on and get to Seattle. The Grand Coulee is seriously in the middle of NOWHERE and in case something happened to the car that's not where I wanted to be stuck.



On to Seattle!