Tag Archives: oregon

Vacation to Oregon

It’s been awhile since I posted, because my husband and I made a long overdue trip to Oregon to see his family. We don’t make it out there nearly often enough, primarily due to the cost of flights. However, thanks to others trips over the last couple years (many of which are due to his job!), we had enough points on Southwest Airlines to make the entire trip on points. All we paid were a few taxes and fees that points didn’t cover. Score!

Portland, OR

Every time I visit Oregon, I fall a little bit more in love with it. My husband even commented that there was a different twinkle in my eye this trip, and I admitted I enjoyed the trip more than ever before.

Growing up in Texas and now living in Tennessee, I am most definitely a Southern Girl. With that, I’ve often visited Oregon and felt like (no pun intended) a duck out of water. This time, though, my eyes were wide open to how similar Oregon is, and how you find good people with great values everywhere you go. And isn’t that what matters the most?

Mt. Hood

On one of our first days there, we visited Manzanita, where an EF-2 tornado went through only a few weeks ago. We got engaged on Manzanita Beach, and it’s only a few minutes from where my husband’s dad lives. Every trip to Oregon has featured walks around Manzanita, taking in its charms. Seeing the damage from the tornado was unsettling, but what I truly took away from our visit was how friendly everyone was on the street.

Manzanita, OR

When I moved to Nashville, one of the things that made me love it was how friendly everyone was… you couldn’t walk into a bar or restaurant without receiving smiles and genuine hellos and, “How are you?”s. Over time, as we’ve all grown more and more weary of the changes coming to our city, I’ve noticed that friendliness has diminished. With that, the openness and friendliness stood out even stronger to me as I walked along the streets of Manzanita.

Manzanita, OR

A favorite moment, when a couple pointed out my Yazoo t-shirt.
“Did you take the tour!?” they asked.
“I work there!” I replied.
“What!? We love Yazoo! We were just there a couple months ago on vacation!”

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For anyone curious, it truly is a very small world.

And on another side note, Oregon truly is the home of great coffee and amazing craft beer.

Fort George Brewery

My husband and I also took time to explore a bit. We visited places he said that he himself had never gone, and others he hadn’t been to since a field trip in elementary school. How often do we fail to visit the places right in our own backyards? How often do we miss the beauty right around us?

Cannon Beach, OR

Finally, it was wonderful to reconnect with family. As I stated in the beginning, we don’t get out there nearly enough, so we take our trips out there very seriously. We also tend to visit in stealth mode… slipping in and slipping out before most people know we are even there. And it’s not because we don’t want to see everyone! It’s because we want to focus as much time as possible with family, versus spreading ourselves too thin. One of these days, we’ll go for a much longer period, and we will be able to see EVERYONE we wish to see. But on these shorter trips, our focus in on his family. As the years pass, we are keenly aware of the fact that these opportunities won’t be there forever. We want embrace the time we have with both hands, and we want to make memories we can share long after the opportunities fade.

picmonkey-oregon

Or more of my photos from our trip, visit my Flickr photo album. If you ever get a chance to visit the Pacific Northwest, go. Just go. And take in the beautiful scenery, and more sure to visit as many of the locals as you can. You might just make a new friend or two or ten.

Oregon 2016

A week in Oregon

I have been MIA the last week due to taking a quick and quiet trip to Oregon.

Portland, OR
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).

Oregon
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:

Manzanita, Oregon
Sunset outside Nehalem, Oregon.

And a cousin that makes pizzas in his own fire pizza oven…

IMG_6381
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…

Manzanita, Oregon
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.

Manzanita, Oregon
Beach Love

Yes, I’m kinda in love with the ocean and the beach.

Manzanita, Oregon
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
Tillamook Cheese Factory

I mean look at that gooey, cheesy goodness!

Tillamook Cheese Factory
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.

Tillamook Air Museum
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…

Tillamook Air Museum
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.

McMenamin's Kennedy School
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.  More posts from our trip to come this week…