Thursday, my husband and I found ourselves with the whole day to ourselves. We could do anything we wanted to do.
So we jumped on the motorcycle and took off… literally with no destination in mind. We headed out north of Nashville, and we just started driving down roads. At one point when we stopped my husband said he was just angling back towards town, but we didn’t really have any idea where we were.
Open road all to ourself!
My favorite road was “Pickle Knight Rd” and I literally laughed out loud at that name. But it was so freeing to just ride. Sometimes we found ourselves on busier highways, but mostly we were all on our own on a small blacktop angling up or down mountain ridges.
Motorcycle Selfie!
We stopped at a gas station for “lunch.” I grabbed a club sandwich and sweet tea. My husband grabbed some of those warm taquito things you see at gas stations and a sweet tea. We split a bag of potato chips. We just stood by the bike and munched away, talking about our ride so far. I have to say it was one of the most fun lunches I’ve had in awhile!
Our day ended as daylight was running out, and my legs were hurting from riding. (I have long legs, so sometimes riding can end up with me having cramped up legs after awhile.) We went home and grilled out, putting the perfect bow on a relaxing day off together.
Yummy dinner!
Below is a video I took as we went down one of our favorite little roads in Middle Tennessee. You will want to mute the sound because its all just wind noise, but if you look really close, you can see the lightening bugs dancing near the treeline. It was kinda magical!
I have been MIA the last week due to taking a quick and quiet trip to Oregon.
Hello PDX!
 It was a long over-due trip to see my husband’s family. We don’t get to Oregon near enough, and I’ll be the first to admit that. Flights, though, are expensive cross-country, but we happened to luck out with cheap flights on Southwest Airlines. In fact, they were cheap enough that I was able to purchase MY round trip using nothing but rewards points. (Score!) So that freed up money for the rental car, and a couple nights hotel stays (one on each end of our week at my father-in-law’s house).
I looked out at this every morning with a cup of coffee…
When we go to Oregon, we are gloriously in the land of no-cell-service. Unless you sit close to a window. And even then its iffy. So basically, going to Oregon = getting off the grid.
But who really wants to even be on the grid with views like this:
Sunset outside Nehalem, Oregon.
And a cousin that makes pizzas in his own fire pizza oven…
You can’t beat homemade pizza our of a fire oven.
Oh and I can’t forget to mention we’re only five minutes from the beach…
I love the beach! We were SO LUCKY with not only sunny days, but warm-ish days!
We got engaged on that beach, the first time I got to see the ocean. (The Gulf of Mexico soooo doesn’t count.) We reminisce about that every time we visit. And I find myself more and more an ocean lover. I think if I could, I’d spend hours on end on the beach just watching the waves crash, listening to their soothing rumble, breathing in the salty sea air.
Beach Love
Yes, I’m kinda in love with the ocean and the beach.
Watching the sun set over the ocean makes you feel so small… like all your “troubles” are pretty minuscule in the grand scheme of things.
And cheese. Tillamook Cheese to be exact. This lactose intolerant girl can’t get enough of it.
Tillamook Cheese Factory
I mean look at that gooey, cheesy goodness!
Seriously. Grilled Cheese made at a cheese factory with bacon and tomato?! Get out of town!! That’s heaven in a basket right there!
We drove by the Tillamook Air Museum long after they’d closed. Drove right up to it.
The Air Museum is kinda HUGE.
I half expected armed guard to come up to us and ask us what we were doing. Somehow, our little black Camaro went unnoticed that night. Heck, it felt kind of like we could have driven INSIDE it that night…
From Wikipedia: The museum is housed in a former military blimp hangar, called “Hangar B”, which is the largest clear-span wooden structure in the world. […] Constructed by the US Navy in 1942 during World War II for Naval Air Station Tillamook, the hangar building housing the aircraft is 1,072 feet long and 296 feet wide, giving it over 6 acres of area. It stands at 192 feet tall.Upon return to Portland for our early morning flight, I asked for a nice date night. My sister-in-law took us to McMenamin’s Kennedy School the year we got engaged, and we saw the movie Jarhead in the theater. This trip, we grabbed dinner… And now, I kinda want to stay in the hotel portion in an upcoming trip.
I had their beer, “Ruby” and it was kinda amazing.
Our week-long trip just went too fast, and we were (as always) left with things we wished to do. But we both vowed it would not be as long before we visited again. This Texas girl, who lives in Tennessee, definitely loves Oregon.
♦♦♦
CLICK HERE to see ALL my photos from our Oregon Trip, which I think are some of my favorite shots in general to date. Â More posts from our trip to come this week…
