July 2008: The Month in Review (warning: this is a long one)

Well, since I can't seem to finish blogging about our Europe trip, I thought I'd skip ahead and write about some of the highlights of the month of July! It's been a busy month and a lot of fun!

It started out on July 1st with Jeremy's brother getting married! It was a fun day we were able to spend with family and friends. Congrats to the happy couple!

I had taken the rest of the week off since we got Friday, the Fourth of July off anyway, so Jeremy and I decided to be spontaneous and took off for the Oregon Coast!

• We left on July 2nd, around 4 or 5 pm from Idaho, and drove and drove. We went through Boise and Ontario, Oregon, and ended up staying that night in a little town called La Grande at the local Travel Lodge.



• We got some sleep and were off again the next morning, July 3rd. We headed north and drove along the Columbia River. It was beautiful along the river. We stopped at several places along the way, The Dalles Dam, the Bonneville Dam and the Bonneville Dam Fish Hatchery. We also went part of the way on the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Highway, and saw some beautiful waterfalls. We started with Horsetail Falls, then stopped at Oneonta Gorge and hiked in a little bit, and then at the impressive Multnomah Falls where we walked up to the bridge to get a better view. Very beautiful. We had a good time stopping whenever we wanted and and just exploring along our way. The river was a lot bigger than I ever thought. We crossed a few of the bridges over into Washington, one of them being the Bridge of the Gods. After all of those stops, we made our way through Portland and on up through several small towns to Astoria, Oregon. Now, I have wanted to go to Astoria, Oregon forever because it is where one of my favorite childhood movies was filmed, that's right, The Goonies!! I think I must have watched that movie 100 times or more when I was little, I loved it! We got there when it was getting dark, so decided to stay the night there so we could get a better view in the morning.



• On July 4th we got up and started our day with a delicious breakfast at the Pig N' Pancake that was right next to our hotel. We also got a good view of the Astoria-Megler Bridge that crosses the river over to Washington. We ended up getting our breakfast for free because we waited FOREVER for it, so that was nice! I'm a fan of the Pig N' Pancake! We drove over the bridge and through the main section of town. We kept looking for the rocks that were filmed in the Goonies, but hadn't seen them as we headed out of town. I was a little bit worried about it as we left, but Jeremy assured me we couldn't really miss them. The next city was Seaside, and it was a so busy and crowded that after driving around for a bit, and catching a view of the ocean, we decided to move on. The next stop was Cannon Beach, where I got my view of the beach filmed in the Goonies. I've never been so excited to see rocks before!! It was pretty cold that day, so I was freezing as we walked along the beach to get a better view of the ocean and coastline. We took a bunch of pictures and watched the people flying their kites and playing. The drive along the 101 was so beautiful, it was so green with awesome views of the coast, so cool! We stopped at several of the view points, and drove through a few more smaller towns. We also stopped at a roadside stand to buy some cherries! I love cherries! Almost as much as I love cheese curds, which brings me to our next stop. Tillamook, Oregon!! We went to the cheese factory where I bought 4, yes 4, bags of cheese curds, some slices of cheese, various other souvenirs and some delicious ice cream! It was a fun place to stop, we walked around and saw the rest of the factory and sampled some cheese, ate our ice cream, and of course took pictures. We continued south through Lincoln City, stopped at Cape Foulweather, and then again to hike down the stairs to see Devil's Punchbowl up close, and finally ended up in Newport, where there was no hotel to be found, that had any vacancies and was halfway decent anyway. We ended up staying in a small little town called Toledo (about 7 miles from Newport), but we watched the fireworks that night over the bay in Newport, it was pretty cool, and a good way to celebrate America's Birthday!



• July 5th was another fun filled day of driving, eating cherries and cheese curds, and making our way down the rest of the coast. We made stops at the Sea Lion Caves (which they way overcharge for, just so you know), Heceta Head Lighthouse, and various other viewpoints trying to see the ocean as much as possilbe. We ended up driving all the way down to Brookings, crossing over into California and staying at Crescent City. We had trouble finding a hotel here as well, we went to several different ones and couldn't get a room. Finally we got lucky and found a little bit of a dumpy one, but hey, when you've been driving and exploring all day and have a belly full of cheese curds, sometimes it doesn't matter where you sleep!
  
  
• July 6th started out with a 20 minute drive to the Trees of Mystery, in the middle of the California Redwood Forest. They had a huge Paul Bunyan figure in the front who would talk to people as they walked in and by and he just cracked me up. It made me giggle when he would shock people by telling them exactly what they were doing, or when he would say, "the lady in the purple shirt" and the lady would look around and see who was looking at her, and look up at Paul trying to figure out how an huge inanimate object knew all this information and could talk! If you want to see the website, here it the link: http://www.treesofmystery.net/ It was also overpriced to get in, but for some reason I didn't mind. The redwoods were amazing, and we got to take a ride up on the skyrail, which was a little scary, but fun. We had a good time there, and took more pics. There was one down side to the morning: before we went into the see the trees, we went across the road and had breakfast at the Forest Cafe. Which I must say, rivaled, and probably surpassed the deliciousness of Pig N' Pancake, however when we actually had to pay for it and didn't get it free, that was a little disappointing. But, that wasn't the down side. After we finished paying, we went to cross back over, in the crosswalk I might add. We looked both ways, like we were both taught to do, found that there were no cars coming, proceeded to cross the street, and almost lost our lives as some idiot turning left out of the parking lot just about mowed us down. I seriously thought we were going to get hit! I was trying to pull Jeremy across the road and he was trying to pull me back, we didn't know where this guy was going. But, we did make it across alive, no bruises or anything. Just a little bit angry that this stupid guy wasn't paying attention. My heart hasn't beat that fast for a while, and kept up the beat for at least 5 more minutes. Scary! After our near death experience, we explored more of the Forest, drove through the giant Redwood with our car, went on some of the backroads, hiked around a little bit, and really enjoyed the morning and afternoon in the beautiful forest. We finally left late that afternoon and started our long trip back home (after saying one last good buy to the beautiful coast). We made it to Reno, Nevada late that night (good thing Jeremy is a good late-night driver). We stayed in the Circus-Circus, where we got our room for free after Jeremy had a run in with a really loud, rude maid.



• July 7th was spent on the road as we drove the width of Nevada and finally made it home that night about 9 pm. It was great to be home, but we had so much fun and would recommend driving the Oregon Coast to everyone, it is so worth it!!

July 10th we had a delicious dinner with our good friends Emily, Rick, Hunter, Kris and Taylon. Good times were had by all, so happy Emily and family live in Utah now! We also rented Goonies, in honor of our trip, and watched it that night with the newly returned honeymooners.

July 12th was Jeremy's family reunion in Logan. He has such a great family and it was fun to spend the afternoon with them. I was also introduced to Ironport, a drink which is very tasty, kind of a mix between cherry coke and cream soda, delicious! I was disappointed, however, to go to the Gossner cheese factory only to find out they had sold out of cheese curds!! Bummer. I did get a yummy cherry vanilla ice cream cone tho, so that makes up for it a little bit.

July 21st was the day we got to see The Dark Knight with our good friends Carrie, Matt, Mac and Charami. I loved Batman Begins, and I wasn't disappointed with this one. The story, the characters, the acting, all top notch. I still love Batman Begins, I can't explain why really. I think after never enjoying the other Batman movies, and seeing how they did Batman Begins and were so clever and creative with it, and how much better it was, I have loved it ever since. It also came out during the time I was considering going into Graphic Design, and was taking classes, so I used the movie to make my movie poster and a few other projects, and had so much fun with it.

July 24th, Pioneer Day! We ended up going up to Montpelier Reservoir and doing a little bit of camping. Jory and Angie made up some delicious tin foil dinners and we roasted marshmallows and had smores with Kristin, Mattie, Eden and Gabe. Oh, and we also got all four of us (Jory, Angie, myself and Jeremy) in a canoe, which was really freaking me out cause I didn't feel like falling into the water fully dressed, I was afraid we were going to sink right in to that reservoir! I slept awful that night, it was pretty cold and uncomfortable, but it was fun camping with Jeremy and everyone. The next day, July 25th, we went fishing to try out Jeremy's new fishing pole. We waded through the creek, which was freezing cold, and took Jeremy about 10 minutes to convince me that I could actually step in and survive it. Once in, I caught two fish! We let them all go tho, I'm not much for fish frying. Then we were able to watch Mattie and Eden participate in a young miss pageant, where Eden got runner up and Mattie won in their age groups. The girls were so confident and cute, they told about themselves and then answered some questions! They did a great job, Go Girls! We bar-b-qued after that, which was delicious, and then topped off the night with our number 2 viewing of The Dark Knight, which was even better the second time, I thought anyway.

On July 28th we picked up our very first Bar-b-Que, I was so excited!! Now we are going to grill like crazy!!

On July 29th we fired her up (the grill that is) and made some hamburgers with our good friends Kris, Taylon, Emily, Rick and Hunter. They were delicious! We also had lunch at Jeremy's sister where we ate her delicious garden grown vegetables!! They were so yummy!! Our garden is looking really good as well, we picked some peas and green beans already. We also have tomatoes coming in and broccoli and cauliflower. I'm so excited to have garden grown veggies!

This has been a great month! I'm sad to see July go and that it is already August, but hopefully August will bring some fun adventures too! I will be posting pictures of the above happenings shortly. Sorry for post without the pictures, pictures are so much more fun to see.