Visit from Dan's Mom

Dan's mom was out here last weekend, and it was a really nice visit. We went to dinner when she got in on Friday- and since Friday was such a clear, nice day, she was able to see Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helen's before it got dark.

Then on Saturday we went to lunch where I work before driving out to the West coast. We had heard that whatever the weather in Portland is, to expect the opposite on the coast, and that held true for our trip. The first half of the drive out there was very scenic and sunny. It was chilly and gloomy after that, but still nice. Pacific Ocean water is painfully freezing even just to wade in. We threw the frisbee around, and Dan found a crab claw which he named Sherwin Williams and took home as a souvenir. Also- we visited Cannon Beach- where the rocks from the movie "The Goonies" are. On the drive back Jayne found a place off of Route 26 to buy birdhouses, and we went to a cafe.

The Rose Festival is going on in Portland right now, so after returning from the coast we went to a parade that was part of the celebration. We found a spot on a wall looking down onto the street. Before the parade there was a 5k run that came through, which was more fun than the parade, because of the costumes many of the runners wore. The night before we had noticed that our roommates had bought goofy WWF wrestler masks, and we thought it was funny but didn't really question it. We watched the 5k run and figured out what the masks were for, as they went running by us.

Picture Descriptions
*These are also not my pictures
1. View of Mt. Hood on a clear day from just outside of downtown Portland
2. Mt. St. Helen's
3. Cannon Beach rocks, you might recognize from "The Goonies"
4. Picture from the 2007 Rose Festival Starlight Parade

My next blog entry will be pictures of the house and neighborhood where we currently live as well as the apartment we are moving into later this month! Yes, we signed a lease today, and I'm really excited about it, but right now I have to go to work. Later!

I got a job!

After two or three weeks of job hunting (and going a little crazy doing so) I got a job at McMenamins Kennedy School, which is actually a hotel.

McMenamins are popular out here-- they have hotels, restaurants, pubs, theaters, breweries, wineries, and distilleries (and often, all of those things are together at one location.) They host a lot of live music. They are known for buying historic properties (especially properties that are at risk of being demolished because no one is willing to buy them) to house their operations.

So, the Kennedy School is an old elementary school- what used to be the auditorium is now the theater with tables and couches so you can eat/drink while watching your movie; the hotel rooms are in old classrooms (the original chalkboards are still on the walls); the brewery is in the former girls locker room; there's also a restaurant with a courtyard, a hot soaking pool, 5 bars- including "detention bar" which is a tiny cigar and whiskey bar, rooms to rent out for events- including what used to be the library and gym. People have weddings and receptions there too.

As for other McMenamins locations, there are lots of them, but to name a few- one is where an old poor farm used to be, and another in an old saloon that was originally run by a couple of Polish immigrants. The Mission theater where Dan and I went to a bluegrass show, used to be a church- the list goes on. Go to the website and look around-- pretty neat. They also have some really nice gardens and artwork on the properties. McMenamins.com

All-in-all, I like the job- I mean there were wine tastings at both our orientation and first department meeting. I eat free cheeseburgers and use the soaking pool. I like the people I work with, and I don't watch the clock. I'm a receptionist at the front desk, and eventually I want to be involved in music booking or event coordination for the company.

Picture Descriptions:
* These are not my pictures-- most are from the McMenamins website
1. Kennedy School Front
2. Kennedy School 102 degree soaking pool
3. Kennedy School theater (former auditorium)
4. Kennedy School restaurant
5. Kennedy School restaurant courtyard (I don't know these people)
6. Kennedy School "detention" cigar and whiskey bar

The Oregon Trail Day 3

Day 3- 750 miles up lots of hills and against the wind, which ruined the good gas mileage we were getting. Boo. But day 3 was really good for scenery. We went from Ogden, Utah to Portland via Boise and the Columbia River Gorge.

Utah in the morning was beautiful- snowy mountains, sunshine, the great salt lake. A tumbleweed got stuck in the grill of my car! Boise wasn't all that exciting looking, so we just kept driving. Then we got to the Idaho/Oregon border where we saw the OreIda headquarters... which makes sense, but I never really thought about the name.

Oregon was super pretty the whole way through. Of the 10 states we were in, that is the only one we could really say that about. It had desert-like area in the East, then we came to a huge overlook (the picture on the title of this blog) before driving at a steep grade down for a long time (this area is called dead man's pass or something, and they have these little drives that go straight up- this is in the event that a truck's (or car's, I guess) breaks go out-- that way they can drive straight up rather than off the side of a mountain.), then there were grape farms, then we eventually hit forest, then we hit the Columbia River Gorge, which was awesome, and our pictures don't really do it justice. We saw waterfalls, and a dam and mossy cliffs. The weather in Oregon changed every few minutes during the drive here, and that hasn't really changed since getting to Portland. On the trip it went from being sunny to snowing and hailing a little before reverting back to being sunny. This time of year in Portland, it's common for half of the day to be rainy and the other half perfect.

We drove into Portland while it was still light out. We found the neighborhood we lived in and were pleased at how nice it was-lots of trees and other plants, nice little houses. Then we came to a house that, unlike the other houses, had no grass, but did have pirate flags in the windows- our new home. We met our roommates, unpacked some stuff, went out for hot wings and got lost driving around downtown.

We had little to no car trouble on the way out here, no fender benders, decent weather. We didn't lose anything, get anything stolen, get kidnapped, or get too lost at any point. We didn't even want to kill each other after spending 3 days in a car together.

Picture Descriptions:
Please enlarge the scenic ones! Especially the panoramic one!
These are grouped by subject, but not chronological.
1. Oregon is really pretty.
2.-7. The area of and around the giant overlook/ "dead man's pass"
8.-10. Columbia River Gorge, inc. the dam
11. The last leg of the trip
12.-18. Welcome to Portland!, inc. partial skyline, the convention center, the first public transit spotting(!), the basketball stadium
19.-24. Idaho
25. There's a tumbleweed in my grill!

The Oregon Trail Day 2

On day 2, we drove from Hays, Kansas to Ogden, Utah.
Roughly another 850 miles.
We passed through Denver, Colorado, Cheyenne, Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, and Ogden, Utah, where we spent the night, is very close to Salt Lake City.

Highlights:
In Laramie, a college town, we drank a beer at a higher altitude than we ever had before.
We could have stopped to see the "World's Largest Prairie Dog."
I forded a river and Dan almost died of dysentery (or was it a snake bite?).
Wyoming had some beautiful scenery.
Wyoming also had a very ominous area we called "the Void."

Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado were boring. We literally saw a tumble weed and cheered. Then nothing happened for 200 miles. Then we saw another tumbleweed and cheered again. We also drove 200 miles without even once being passed. Denver and Cheyenne were sort of disappointing. It didn't help that it was pretty gloomy in those areas. But the scenery later on made up for it. By the time we crossed over into Utah it was getting dark, we were tired, and I was getting cranky, so we opted to find a hotel asap instead of driving to Salt Lake City.

Picture Descriptions:
(again, I recommend enlarging all pictures by clicking on them... they look much better like that)
These pictures are not in chronological order, instead I put the ones I liked the most up top.
1. Merge sign in maybe Colorado?
2. Train in maybe pre-void Wyoming?
3.-7. Beautiful, rocky, giant, Wyoming landscape
8. 75 mph speed limit in the middle of nowhere
9. Letting us know where we can see the world's largest prairie dog
10. Our 1st forest fire sighting
11. Oil driller thing on the side of the road in maybe Colorado, maybe Kansas
12. Despite the giant signs, this store did not sell mittens
13. Buford, next exit

The Oregon Trail Day 1

We left a couple of hours later than expected, but still managed to make it to Hays, Kansas by the end of day one. According to Wikipedia:

"In the early days, Hays was a wild and lawless town, filled with saloons and dance halls. The legendary Wild Bill Hickok served as sheriff for a few months in 1869, but left town the next year after a brawl with some troopers from Fort Hays. Summing up her impression while her husband, George Custer, was encamped near Fort Hays, Elizabeth Custer said, "there was enough desperate history in that little town in one summer to make a whole library of dime novels." Between August of 1867 and December of 1873 there were over 30 homicides in and around Hays. Hays developed the reputation, which was well deserved, as one of the most violent towns on the Kansas Frontier."

However, nowadays, Hays seems very safe. It was basically one big strip of hotels and restaurants. We gorged ourselves at a Mexican restaurant before passing out at the Motel 6.

In our first day of driving we went though Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City and Topeka. 850 miles. Maybe 13 hours since we had left Brookville. Eastern Kansas was surprisingly pretty- home of the Flint Hills- http://www.kansasflinthills.travel/ Somehow, we managed to avoid bad weather for the most part. It was a little rainy in St. Louis, but that was it. The biggest threat to us were these giant poles that fell off of an RV just outside of St. Louis- they stretched across the whole width of the highway, so we couldn't avoid running over one of them... luckily no flat tires or anything.

Also, in St. Louis we started a daily lunchtime ritual- stopping at a Subway to use the restroom and gank mayonaise packets for our tuna salad sandwiches.

Picture Descriptions-
(I would click on each picture to enlarge it, because some of them are impossible to make out otherwise)
1. Our Toyota Camry Conestoga wagon, bike rack attached, packed and ready to go.
2. Leaving Ohio
3. Entering Illinois action shot
4. Entering Missouri action shot
5. St. Louis
6. Entering Kansas