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Park City, UT

Park City, UT

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Hey Guys!! We made it to Utah! This trip, our stay in Utah was only one week, but we have plans to spend about a month and a half exploring more of Utah next year.

We stayed at an RV park in Park City, UT. It wasn’t a terribly long drive day for us, but it was super hot and it was pretty much a constant climb up hills the entire way. Our home-on-wheels started to protest the heat and having to work so hard when we were about twenty minutes away from our RV park in Park City. Luckily, we were right by a chain-up area where we could pull off. We unhooked the toad and I drove the rest of the way in the 4Runner while Jerl drove the RV.

The boys were super excited to have a pool to play in all week. We had the pool and the hot tub all to our selves the entire time. We didn’t mind. The water in the pool was pretty cold…even though the day temps were warm, the nights would dip pretty cold. Nicholas was really cold one day when he got out of the pool and it took us a good five minutes to talk him into getting into the hot tub with us to warm up. He kept saying he was too cold for the hot tub! Ha! Kids…

We had access to a great hiking trail right outside the RV park. We love to walk in the evenings. Some RV parks are good for it and some aren’t. It’s always nice to find a park where we can easily get some walking miles in.

We were close to Salt Lake City so we went to visit the Utah State Capitol Building. I love all of the columns. And Guys, check out that dome! I love the clouds and all of the seagulls painted on it. So pretty! All of that Georgia marble is gorgeous. And the huge skylight… love it!

I don’t know what this animal is supposed to be. It looks like a Pegasus with pink wings combined with a seahorse. Whatever it is, it’s stinkin’ cute. Even though the Utah SCB wasn’t one of the biggest ones we’ve seen…even though it wasn’t super ornate… the whole building was impressive with it’s attention to details.

We wanted to lay eyes on the Great Salt Lake. I did a little looking and found Antelope Island State Park which sits in the Great Salt Lake. We headed over for a little looky-loo one afternoon. From my research I knew the best place to see the island’s bison herd was over at the Historic Fielding Garr Ranch so we headed that way. We hadn’t gotten very far into the park when we spotted our first bison. They were everywhere! Some were in groups, some were out solo or in pairs.

Down the road from the bison we ran into these curious prong horn antelope. They were right by the road. I didn’t have to use zoom at all to get that shot. We stopped for a minute, then drove on when they started to get a little antsy with the paparazzi sticking a camera in their face. Aren’t the gorgeous though?! We were really surprised by how awesome this little island was. At forty-two square miles, Antelope Island is the largest of ten islands that sit in the Great Salt Lake.

The Historic Fielding Garr Ranch is where the majority of the bison herd hangs out. It was closed when we got there (after 5pm), but we were still able to walk around and look. Fielding Garr Ranch was established in 1848 and is one of the oldest working ranches in the Western US. In 1893, twelve American Bison were brought to Fielding Garr Ranch. Those twelve eventually became one of the biggest and oldest bison herds in the US. Today, the number of bison fluctuates between 500 and 700 bison depending on how many calves were born and how many bison were culled, sent to other herds, or died of natural causes. If you’re in the area, every October the Great Bison Roundup takes place where they gather up all of the bison on the island and do a health check to decide about culling or moving of the bison. We’d love to go check out the roundup some year!

After we got our fill of bison…honestly, can that ever happen…we drove to the other side of the island to do a short hike out to Lady Finger Point. We were loosing the sun at this point so we couldn’t do much hiking. We got out to the point just in time for a pretty spectacular sunset. We took our time looking around then headed back to the car before we lost all light.

We found a great burger place called Proper Burger. Check out that burger! Yup, those are fries on the burger. You can’t see it but there was also an egg on the burger with those fries and bacon. You should check it out if you’re in the Salt Lake area.

I didn’t really see any pretties during our week in Utah. It was toward the end of summer and still really hot and dry. I did catch this thistle just as it was starting to open up. I love the symmetry of it along with the colors.

We really enjoyed our week in Utah. It was short and went fast, but it was a great first trip to the state. We’re hoping to spend all of next September (2019) and part of October exploring a few of Utah’s National Parks!

See y’all down the road!

#westernloop2018

Pizza Roundup Flying Pie Pizzeria

Pizza Roundup Flying Pie Pizzeria

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To my fellow pizza lovers! I bring to you a post from Boise, Idaho.

Flying Pie Pizzaria and Bistro is a really good pizza place that has WAY too many choices on the menu, but they just can’t get all of the tastiness they have on a small menu.

The first time we went there, (yes, we went more than once) we spent a while looking at the menu trying to decide what to get.

Mom and Alex split a Chile-N-Lime Chicken pizza. It has a bean sauce instead of your typical red sauce AND it’s on sourdough crust. You just can not beat a sourdough crust.

I believe this one is the No Veggy Pieway pizza. With added jalapenos. Just look at all the meat!!

What I am about to say may shock some of you, but the first time we went I didn’t get a pizza. I got a pizza sammich!! It was really good, but you’ll want to eat it quick so the bread doesn’t get soggy from all the pepperoni they put on it. My only complaint about the sandwich is it was kinda sweet.

Now, the second time there was no menu needed for me…they have a buffet! Weekdays only. And it did not disappoint. They have a lot more than 2 pizzas on the buffet at a time, some dessert and garlic knots!

I may have eaten too much there. They should get a warning sign saying “Caution! Not responsible for eating too much!”

The restaurant is nice and clean. The service is good.

Oh yeah, they have aliens in the bathroom. Pretty cool! Well with all of that I think it’s obvious Flying Pie Pizzeria and Bistro gets a 5-star review.

See y’all next time on…

Pizza Street!!

#pizzastreet

Written by Nicholas
Boise, ID

Boise, ID

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Hey Guys! The next three weeks are going to fly by for us! We are officially on our way to Florida for the winter. We’re making some big jumps with the next three states so we can spend some time back in Missouri and Texas before hunkering down in the Sunshine State for the cold winter months.

After two very long drive days we finally made it to Idaho!! When we first started this nomad life thing, we did really long drive days all the time. It was just part of the life since we were trying to jump our way out of Tornado Alley during tornado season. After we got back from Alaska where we had a week of twelve to fourteen hour drive days through Canada to get back to the lower 48…well, we decided those long drive days weren’t working for us anymore and I started planning shorter drive days. So, the two really long drive days to get to Boise, Idaho had us…I don’t know if reminiscing is really the right word…more like dredging up how we felt about all of those super long drive days we used to have.

We were only in Idaho for one week, but we crammed us much in as we could! Our first stop was the State Capitol Building. I loved all of the marble used in the Idaho SCB. We, actually, ended up visiting the Idaho SCB twice. The first time we went the stamp I need for my State Capitol book was locked up. We didn’t get to take a guided tour, but we were able to poke around on our own.

Y’all know I love a great staircase. This is one of the main staircases in the Idaho SCB and is made of marble! We enjoyed the Idaho State Capitol Building. There are a few things I tend to look for at SCBs and a great dome is pretty much at the top of my list. The Idaho SCB’s dome is simple, but beautiful. It’s an apt description for the entire building. Simple. Great colors. And Beautiful.

We always look for different things to do in each area we visit so when we found out about the old Idaho State Penitentiary, we planned a day to go explore it. We were lucky enough to get there right before a tour started.

Before it was an Idaho State Penitentiary, it was an Idaho Territorial Prison. The building in the picture above used to be the kitchen. It burned when some inmates started a riot over…bacon. The Great Bacon Riot of 1973. That should totally be a book. Or a movie.

We got to take a look in the cells of the isolation building called Siberia. No heat, no AC, no bathroom…it earned it’s name when some of the inmates froze to death while serving time there.

According to the docent, there are parts of the old prison known to be haunted. The cell in the picture above is one of those areas that more than one person has claimed to experience something paranormal while near it. We were allowed into several of the cells in this area, but this cell was locked tight. Are you interested in a ghost story? Well, according to the docent, each year during Halloween the old penitentiary holds a haunted prison. It’s like a haunted house. They hire actors and local college kids to help in the haunted prison. One of the girls hired started screaming for someone to let her out of the cell about an hour into her shift. The others thought it was part of her act, so they didn’t go investigate. By the time her shift was over, she was curled up in the corner crying. She claims that there was a thick shadow that kept following her around the cell and crowding her. Several other actors throughout the years have had similar stories about that same cell.

The Idaho Territorial Prison was built in 1870. In 1872 it was turned into the Idaho State Penitentiary and was open until 1973 when they opened a new State Penitentiary that was bigger.  In the over 100 years the Old Idaho State Penitentiary was running, it received over 13,000 prisoners. Only 213 of those inmates were women. Back when the prison was first opened, they had the women and men inmates in the same facility. Our docent kept all of the stories she told us to PG, but she did hint at more than a few…unsavory things that happened during the lifetime of the prison. I think the experience was eye opening for the boys. We all hear about prison, we see it on televisions and in the movies, but to actually walk the halls and see the cells of a real prison and to hear real stories about real people who were in those cells and halls…it’s different. It’s real.

We found an overlook of More’s Creek. It was a gorgeous day! We’d just spent several weeks in smoky areas of Oregon and Washington without seeing a blue sky so you can imagine that this amazingly blue sky was a very welcome sight.

We found the old Diversion Dam. Back in the late 1800s the Territory of Idaho built the Diversion Dam to help with farming. We were going to walk down this cute boardwalk until we noticed all of the spiderwebs. There were so many webs! So. Many!! And most of their residents were home. I wanted to kill them all with fire, but we didn’t think Idaho would appreciate that. So we drove on.

Let’s talk foodies! We found a pizza place that landed firmly on our top five list. Nicholas will tell you all about it in a Pizza Street post, but I will say this…the spinach artichoke dip with those little bread bites…I could have easily eaten my weight in them. I might have done just that. Maybe.

We also found a…well, a fry place that serves their fries with a side of burger. Seriously. The Boise Fry Company had so many different kinds of fries! Different types of potatoes are offered in different cuts of fries. My faves were the little po’ balls. Little scoops of mashed potatoes deep fried…it was like little balls of deep fried heaven. The potatoes available change seasonally and the cuts offered per potato change daily. And…check out all of the different kinds of dips! You didn’t really think a place that specializes in fries would only offer ketchup, did you? We had to try all of the dips and several of the shakers. They ranged from savory to sweet. We would have totally eaten at this place again! It was a fun find.

We were pleasantly surprised by the top-notch foodies offered in Boise. We definitely didn’t go hungry.

It was hot and toward the end of a dry summer when we were in Boise so there weren’t many pretties. We saw quite a few of these flowers along the roads though. The bees were thoroughly enjoying them!

We enjoyed Boise, ID more than we thought we would. We have plans to go back to Idaho next year to do some more exploring!

See y’all down the road!

#westernloop2018
Pizza Roundup Westside

Pizza Roundup Westside

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To my fellow pizza lovers! I bring to you a post from Port Angeles, WA.

Westside is a pretty good pizza place with a fast food-ish vibe from the inside. But butter… I mean better.

Just look at these bread sticks! They were so good! Especially after a long day of exploring Olympic National Park. It did take a little bit for the food to come out, but not too long.

And when it did come out it was gooood! The service was good and the restaurant was clean.

On the pizza Mom and I shared there was so much cheese, and lots of cheese is not a bad thing at all. The sauce wasn’t super sweet like what we tend to get a lot.

Did I mention they had arcade games to keep you occupied while your food cooks? I didn’t? WELL, they do! I had to play some pinball. After we ate Dad and I played the racing games you see in the corner, unfortunately we couldn’t figure out the multiplayer.

Well I think Westside Pizza gets a 4.5 star review. Even though it was really good, it doesn’t quite make it up there with Potsy’s or Backroad.

See y’all next time on…

Pizza Street!!

#pizzastreet

Written by Nicholas
More OP Adventures

More OP Adventures

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Hey Guys!! We spent two weeks exploring as much of the Olympic National Park as we could. We didn’t get to see nearly as much as we wanted to due to the amount of smoke from all of the nearby fires, but we saw enough to fall in love with the area.

National Parks are usually big. There are smaller monuments or historic sites…but the parks are…well, they’re huge. Usually, they’re more wilderness than not and unless you’re up for doing really long or overnight hikes, you’re not going to get to see most of the park. Olympic National Park is so accessible. You can explore coasts, tall trees, and mountains. The NPS has done a fantastic job with this park and it’s trails.

 On our first full day in the Olympic Peninsula (OP) we headed out to the coastal part of Olympic NP. When we started out it was an absolutely gorgeous day! No smoke in the are…the sun was shining…it was amazing. We stopped by Tongue Point on our way over to our first hike of the day. We got there really early in the morning and spent a few minutes exploring the tide pools. The tide wasn’t very low, so we didn’t see much. The view wasn’t bad though.

Our first hike that day was Cape Flattery. I’d done my research and knew ahead of time that the Cape Flattery hike is super popular and parking can be difficult to find. So, we headed there super early and had our choice of spots to park. There were already quite a few groups there…we weren’t the first that morning. I really love this trail. It’s mostly up on this boardwalk which is cool, but did make it kind of hard to pass people.

It was so sunny that morning when we started out! But Guys…look at all of that fog! I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a little disappointed. I really wanted the unobstructed view here. But, look how gorgeous the view is even with the fog. I mean, when you’re surrounded by beauty it’s hard to be anything but in a good mood.

We were impressed with this tree. It looks like a candelabra to me. You can also kind of see how people were having to hang off and scoot around each other on that boardwalk trail. It was a little narrow, but workable.

It was lunch time when we made it to Rialto Beach and the place was packed! We circled around a couple of times then headed back down the road to find a parking spot. We had lunch in our car and then headed back to the beach to do some exploring. I’d seen online that there was a neat rock formation a little ways down the beach. There were some conflicting distances though, so I wasn’t sure just how far down the beach it was.

Check out the driftwood. It’s huge! And there was a ton of it lining the beach. The farther down the beach we got the fewer people we saw. If you squint at the upper right picture, you can see a couple of the boys next to that big rock. The look like ants. The bottom right pic is another look at how big those rocks were. The boys are standing down below them. It ended up being about a mile down the beach, but it was an enjoyable walk with only a few other people venturing that far. We did find a few little shallow tide pools on our walk. I was hoping to find some sea stars, but…we didn’t see any. Something to look forward to next time we’re in the area.

One of our favorite areas in the Olympic NP is the Hoh Rain Forest. We got to the visitor center right before they were closing, but the park was still open for a few more hours so we did the Hall of Mosses trail. Check out that moss! All of the trees on the trail were dripping with green moss. The entire area was green. Green fuzzy moss, green ferns, green grass in the water…it was a lot of green.

Before we made it to the Olympic National Park, I checked the website to do some last minute research on a trail I wanted to do. It’s always a good idea to check the alert section of the NP website you’ll be visiting. This time I learned about a wasp problem. And they weren’t lying. We had a whole group of wasps decide to take up residence under our car. We drove to a gas station and saw a few of them coming out from under the car, but didn’t think much of it. When we got to our next stop by Lake Crescent we’d lost several of them, but almost didn’t make it back in the car. The wasps that were left were not happy with us. We drove to the Sol Duc trail head and lost the rest of the wasps. We didn’t see any when we got out or came back after the hike. Thank goodness! We did see a whole nest of the same wasps on the Hall of Mosses trail.

We found another tall tree that’s now on our list of favorites. The Sitka spruce averages 220 feet tall and looks very cool dripping with moss.

We walked right by this fawn and its mom while we were on the Hall of Mosses trail. They weren’t terribly worried about us.

We found some decent foodies in the Port Angeles area. We had to stop by a local chain called Frugals. It’s a drive through only so we took it back to our home-on-wheels to eat it. It was pretty good considering it was pure fast-food.

There weren’t very many pretties around, but I found a few. I know this is a mushroom…technically a fungus. But I love the colors in it.

And then there was this pretty. It was all alone on one of the trails we hiked. I love how pristine white it is.

We absolutely loved the OP! More than we thought we would.

See y’all down the road!

#westernloop2018
Olympic Peninsula

Olympic Peninsula

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Hey Guys! We made it all the way up to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington! This is the farthest north we will go on this loop before we turn south and head for Florida for the winter.

We’d spent the last month in smoky and hot Oregon. We started keeping track of where all of the wildfires were the first week we were in Oregon. It felt like the entire western US was on fire. We managed to keep ahead of it, but it got close a few times. Close enough for ash to fall on us. We’d seen a report that there was a wildfire in the eastern side of the Olympic National Park. So, as you can imagine, we were kind of thrilled to see the rain as we were driving into Washington.

We stayed at a great little RV park right near the old Elwha Dam in Port Angeles. We were there for two weeks, but due to the smoke, we spent quite a bit of that time inside. On days when the smoke receded enough, we headed out to explore. We walked down to the old Elwha Dam one afternoon. We could walk there from our RV park which was great. We meant to go back and follow a trail we found but it ended up not happening.

The Olympic Peninsula (OP) of Washington has quite a large population of Native Americans. I loved seeing the dual language signs everywhere!

Our first drive up to Hurricane Ridge (one of the Olympic NP areas) was a little…foggy. If you’ve been following along on our adventures for awhile, you might remember our Sequoia NP fog experience. If you need a refresher, you can find that here. We got a little worried as we drove up the mountain to get to Hurricane Ridge and it kept getting foggier and foggier. I thought, well…here we go again.

Thankfully, we drove up above the fog/clouds and this was our view. Not bad, right? Some of that is fog or clouds and some of it is smoke. It’s still an impressive vista even with the smoke.

We ended up going back up to Hurricane Ridge on a clear-ish day. You can see in the top picture above how the smoke hung around. The smoke was a constant, but the view was still beautiful. One of the cool things about Hurricane Ridge is that during the winter months, you can snow shoe and ski from there. The NP Service has a little snow cabin for the Ranger’s that’s manned during the winter months.

On one of our full days to explore, we headed out to hike and on the way there we drove by Lake Crescent. It was choked with smoke. We’d heard that the smoke would be coming in that day and we were hoping to get in a hike before we had to retreat back inside.

We made it to the Sol Duc Falls that day and it was gorgeous! You couldn’t even tell the smoke was hanging around while we were hiking. We did start to smell it as we were on our way back to our car though. But the hike was awesome.

On a different day, we made it to Marymere Falls. The trailhead for this hike was right on the Lake Crescent shore. I loved the trail for this hike! Check out this bridge we walked over. (top right picture) It was an old log that the NPS had fashioned into a sturdy bridge across a stream. And check out all of the moss. This is what I’d always thought this area would look like. I had a specific vision in my mind of what hiking in the OP would be like…and this picture is it. This is what I thought it would be like…what I had hoped it would be like. You know how sometimes you get it in your head that something is going to be a certain way, but then when you get there it’s so different than what you’d thought that it’s a let down? This place totally held up to what I was hoping it would be. Actually, that’s not true…it was better. In the right picture you can see a little stream the bridge took us over. There was a path down to it. You can get a sense of how big the trees are in this area with this picture. Can you find the person in the lower right corner of this pic?

Here’s another picture of Lake Crescent for you. You can see more of it here and you can kind of see just a hint of the beautiful water color.

We saw so many deer! So, so many! And they weren’t real shy. Guys, don’t try to pet or feed the wildlife. We saw a few people actually trying to take selfies and feed/pet the wildlife. Don’t do that. If you frighten the animal and it harms you…the animal is the one who will suffer. Some parks are required to put down any animal who’s harmed a human. So, just don’t do it. Admire them from afar…take pics from afar, but let them stay wild. Oh! And Guys…check out the blue of this bird! It reminds me so much of the blue water in Crater Lake! There were a couple of these birds playing around while we did the Marymere Falls hike.

I’m realizing that there are tons more pics I want to add on to this post…so I’m going to break it up into two posts. I’m going to show you some foodies we found…and pick up with some more explorations on the next post!

Lets talk foodies for a minute! We hit a BBQ place our first night in the area. It was pretty good! Check out the sandwich one of the boys got. Huge! They ate it all. There wasn’t anything left. We found this little burger place in Forks while we were out exploring one day. You can’t tell, but that burger is huge! Huge! It’s sitting on a regular sized dinner plate. It was and 8″ or 9″ plate. Alex laid waste to this burger. Teenagers…whattaya gonna do? You’ve got to feed them. It’s a good thing we have a residential sized refrigerator in our home-on-wheels!

I found this pretty up on Hurricane Ridge during one of our excursions. Love the purple pretties!

Well, I’m going to leave off here this time. I’ll pick back up with some more OP adventures next time so stay tuned!

See y’all down the road!

#westernloop2018
Portland Area Part Two

Portland Area Part Two

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Hey Guys!! We stayed in the Portland area for two weeks and we tried to squish as much as we could into those two weeks. We didn’t see everything on our list…but we came close.

Most of the time we spent in this area was smoky but we were lucky enough to have a couple of sun filled days to take in the views. We found a great overlook that gave us a nice view of Mount Hood. You can see the haze of smoke in the picture above.

Fort Vancouver was a British fur trading post built in 1824. The National Park Service has done an excellent job recreating Fort Vancouver. When I was looking it up online, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be much more than a partial fence and a building or two…it was really hard to tell online.

There was a volunteer manning the blacksmith building. If you ever really want to get a feel for what life was like while you’re at one of these forts…talk to the volunteers. The volunteers that choose to spend their time teaching the public about what life was like during certain areas or times are some of the most knowledgeable and passionate people we’ve met. We got to see what it took to make just one nail while we were in the blacksmith shop. He talked to us about how anytime the people in the fort needed anything they had to make it themselves. Want a house…better start making nails. Some of the blacksmiths back then could make 100s of nails an hour. The best ones could make 1000s of nails per hour. It took our volunteer a few minutes to make one. The blacksmith was one of the most important people in any settlement and usually made the most money.

The other building that had volunteers present the day we went was the carpenter’s building.  They were making some chairs while we were there.

Due to the lack of funding right now, there was only one Ranger on site and just a handful of volunteers so several of the buildings were locked up. One of the volunteers offered to show us the fur trading building where the area’s settlers would bring in their furs to get money or trade for other items. The biggest money maker was the beaver fur that the top hats were made of. Any respecting gentleman had a top hat made of beaver fur. They would bring the furs in all bundled up in 50 pound packs like the ones in the above left picture. The furs were inspected and weighed before a price was agreed upon.

There was a separate trading building for the Native Americans of the area. One family at a time was let into the fort to trade. When one family left another was let in.

I loved the garden at the fort! Look at all of those pretties! Y’all know my love affair with pretties. I can’t tell you how many pics of different flowers I took…probably more than what was necessary. Ha! The garden was full of life. Bees buzzing around…birds flitting about…I do love a good garden.

Pearson Air Museum is in the same area as Fort Vancouver. I believe the two parks are run jointly. The museum is dedicated to preserving the aviation history of the area. There are some very cool planes and exhibits in an old hangar.

The museum also keeps the history of the old mill that used to be in the area. I love this mural of the lumber mill that helped supply the WWI construction of biplanes. This was a great little museum that had a surprising amount of history and information crammed in it. We could have spent several hours here, but we’d spent all morning at Fort Vancouver and some of us were starting to get a little…hangry and needed food.

I knew there was a lot to do in the Portland area, but I really didn’t know just how much there would be to do! Maybe one day we’ll find ourselves back in the area.

See y’all down the road!

#westernloop2018
Troutdale, OR

Troutdale, OR

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Hey Guys! We spent two weeks in Troutdale, OR so we could check out Portland and see the Columbia River Gorge area.

We really enjoyed staying in Troutdale. It was a cute little town and was close to pretty much everything we wanted to check out in the area.

The RV park we stayed in was right by the river. On weekends it was crazy busy, but through the week it wasn’t too bad. There were tons of marionberry bushes all loaded with ripe berries down by the river and the boys would walk down with me to help pick some. They would eat a few then wander off to the river. Honestly, I think I ended up with more berries in the bowl without their help, but I appreciated the company. We enjoyed fresh marionberries daily while we stayed at this park! Yum!!

At a local food chain called Burgerville we found an amazing marionberry shake! It was so good!

My favorite thing about the location of this RV park was it’s proximity to the river and all of the available walking paths we had. We like to get out and walk around everyday. Some parks make this easier than others. At this one we could walk down by the river, then make our way over to the main street of Troutdale. We could easily spend more time in this area. Troutdale is the cutest little town with art dotted here and there down the main street. We made ourselves a walking loop we liked to do in the evenings. Down by the river then up to the main street and back. We’d get right around 2 miles in when it was all said and done.

Location, location, location. Our home-base for the area was right next to the Columbia River Gorge. The Columbia River Gorge is where the Columbia River makes its way through the area by cutting a path right into the Cascade mountains. If you drive the Historic Columbia River Highway, you’ll come across some amazing waterfalls! This one is a popular one called Multnomah Falls and it’s right off the highway. You don’t have to put in a long arduous hike to get to this one which makes it nice and quick to visit but also is probably why this place was absolutely packed when we got there one morning. We were lucky to find a parking spot! To get to the falls you have to walk in a tunnel that goes under the highway and then under a railroad track. A train went by while we were there…I have to admit that the crowd and the location of the highway/train kind of detracts from the beauty of the falls.

If you stay on the Historic Columbia River Highway you’ll come to the Portland Women’s Forum State Scenic Viewpoint. From the road, it doesn’t look like much. When we pulled in, there was one other car…and I think the guy was living out of his car and staying there over night. But, we pretty much had the place to ourselves to ogle the view. And what a view it was! In the picture above you can see the Vista House sitting up on the cliff over to the right of the picture. That’s where most people go and that’s where we were headed when we saw this little gem of a pull-off.

When we eventually got back in the car and headed to the Vista House, it was packed. There were so many people even though the Vista House was closed. We got there just before they officially closed. I barley had enough time to grab a couple of souvenirs. We hoped that everyone would leave after closing, but we definitely weren’t the only ones hanging around for the view. It is a great view, but I’ll be honest…I think I prefer the view from the Portland Women’s Forum State Scenic Viewpoint.

Now, y’all know we love our foodies. And y’all have probably heard how Portland, OR is a huge foodie town. One of the things we wanted to experience is the famed Portland food truck scene. There are several areas of Portland that have a big gathering of food trucks…they call them Food Cart Pods. We did a little research on what was where and landed at this pod. I don’t remember what it was called, but it had food options for everyone. Charles got some Asian, a couple of us got Polish food, Nicholas had Mexican, and then one of us had Salvadorian food! I expected it to be a fast food setup with everything disposable, but some places had actual plates that you return to them when you’re done. There were tables to sit at while we ate. We were very pleasantly surprised by our food pod experience. We tried to go to a different one while we were in the area, but it didn’t work out. We went on a Sunday and tons of the carts were closed and there wasn’t a place to sit down to eat…so we passed.

But Guys…Portland did not disappoint with the foodies. Not even a little. It’s probably a good thing we were only there for two weeks…there are so many foodie spots to try!

We squished quite a few adventures into the two short weeks we had in the Troutdale area so I’m going to break this area up into two posts. I’ll leave you with these two pretties that we saw on one of our evening walks.

Stay tuned for part two!

See y’all down the road!

#westernloop2018
Salem, OR

Salem, OR

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Hey Guys! We spent one week in Salem, OR exploring the area.

When we left Central Point we were surrounded by wildfires. The RV park was filling with smoke, it was extremely hot and dry, and Guys…we were just so ready to head north to try and get away from it all. When we started out to our next spot, we headed up I-5 and the smoke started getting worse. We got a little worried it would get too thick to drive through, but as we got up out of the valley, the smoke cleared and it turned into a beautiful day.

One of the things we always love to see is what each state looks like…topography, agriculture, different architectural styles…sometimes it surprises us. Like Oregon. We saw so many huge hay fields. Hay as far as the eye could see! It was all mowed down and ready for harvesting, but it still looked really neat. And dry. It’s no wonder why Oregon is a fire hazard every summer.

The main reason we spent time in Salem was to visit the State Capitol Building. Right from the start, I liked this one. Most of the SCBs look something like the National one in DC so it’s nice when we find one that’s different. I wasn’t expecting a dome, but check this one out! I love the patriotic theme of it. The Oregon SCB wasn’t flashy and it wasn’t huge. It didn’t have every square inch covered in decoration but, there were some very nice murals and they used marble from all over the country. It was very tasteful and simplistic. What decorations there were all had meaning.

We added our Oregon sticker! The map is looking kind of full! It’ll be a month before we get to add the Idaho sticker as we start making our way south for the winter.

We heard about a Silver Falls State Park a few weeks before we got to the Salem area. It wasn’t too far from where we were staying so we went to check it out. The most popular trail there is the Trail of Ten Falls. It’s a ten mile trail that takes you by ten falls.

The day we went it was over 100 degrees. It was so so hot. With no breeze. We decided we’d check out two of the falls, but it was just too uncomfortable to try to do all ten miles. We did see some of the local wildlife. This guy wasn’t interested in us at all, he was trying to find place to cool off.

This area of Oregon was shaped by lava flows. Some geologists think there were around eight different lava flows layered up one on top of another in the Silver Falls SP area. Some layered up to as much as 600 feet thick. One of the coolest things about this SP is that the trail actually goes behind some of the waterfalls! Not only was it neat to walk behind a waterfall and look through it…the cooling mist coming off of the waterfall was very welcome. We might have lingered longer than necessary. Ha!

Foodies! Some friends of ours (waves at the McConnels) told us about a BBQ place in the area so we went to check it out. It was so good! Check out that tray full of food! Yum!

It’s getting harder to find pretties…this summer season has been so hot and dry the flowers are either all dried up or too far away to get a decent picture of.

We enjoyed the Salem area more than we thought we would! We would totally visit the area again…during cooler weather.

See y’all down the road!

#westernloop2018

Pizza Roundup Abby’s Legendary Pizza

Pizza Roundup Abby’s Legendary Pizza

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Pizza Street

To my fellow pizza lovers! I bring you a post from Central Point, OR.

Abby’s Legendary Pizza was unfortunately not too great. The food itself was pretty good, but the buffet only had two pizzas at a time. That’s not a lot! They had a lot of mashed potatoes and fried chicken though. We asked for a cheese pizza but they said they only put two pizzas out at a time and they don’t like to put cheese pizza on the buffet because it gets eaten too quickly. Sounds like they should put it out more often if it goes that quick!

Sorry about the blurry picture.

We forgot about the pics for the sammiches but they were… underwhelming in size for what we payed.

I regret to say that Abby’s Legendary Pizza only gets 2.5 stars, due to the ridiculousness of refusing to put up a cheese pizza and just the bad experience we had there. Now, I’m not saying the food wasn’t good, I’m just saying the business practices are not great.

See y’all next time on…

Pizza Street!!

Written by Nicholas