Summer/Fall Adventures Update

Hi all! I’ve been writing this post since September. Busy season is just now subsiding at my office, so I’ll finally finish it! Especially since I just wrote our family Christmas newsletter! (Okay, officially, my cat Arwen “wrote” it again, but I helped) It focuses more on what we’re all up to and into rather than our travels, so I’ll keep this post as a recap and highlights of our trips and activities since the last one. It will probably be the final travel post of 2023. I hope you get some travel ideas and tips to enjoy them! If you know me personally and want a copy of our family newsletter, send me a text/email/Facebook message with your email address. And I’d love to hear in your comments what were your favorite adventures of 2023.

After the Redwoods/Oregon Caves trip I talked about in my last travel post, we went to a few more places in Western Oregon as well as driving north to Washington State. So now our kids have been to two states outside of Oregon! Without further ado, here’s the rest of our adventures from the sunny seasons and into the holiday season. Feel free to skim through them to a place you want to go, or just look at the photos!

Enchanted Forest

The first place we went away from home after the Redwoods trip was The Enchanted Forest. That’s where Chris and I got engaged last year, at the end of a day of theme park fun with the kids. I won’t cover the whole day from this year since I wrote about the place last year, but we had some notable new experiences. We met up there with the kids’ cousins, who happen to be directly related to good friends of mine, because that’s my soap opera life now. Last year we went to the park on a Saturday, but ran out of time to do everything. So this time we went on Monday. It was great! No long lines for rides. We did everything, some things more than once. We saw the summer theatre play this time. “Snow White and the Seven Dorks” has been making kids laugh for decades, and it still does! Some jokes were updated and some were old, but the nostalgia and nerdiness worked for me. Our favorite show, however, was the live band Possibly Irish. We discovered their existence last year but missed the show, and thought “I’m sure it would be neat but it’s fine we missed it.”

This was not the case. The band was way beyond “neat”. They were fantastic! The members may not all be ethnically Celtic and are definitely American, but they are great musicians. The traditional Celtic songs were fun, the instruments played fast and furious, and the harmonies were tight. At one point in the concert (held in a room decked out to look like an Irish pub), every one of our kids was singing along to an old Irish tune that was recently popularized on YouTube. Our oldest two girls bought band tee-shirts, and Chris and I both bought CDs. Here are links to one of the band’s music videos, starring various members of the band at different times, and filmed at The Enchanted Forest. If you like them, they play regularly at the Irish pub in Silverton and occasionally at other venues around Willamette Valley.

“Enchanted Sailor” (family-friendly version of Drunken Sailor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY9mn1pgT0U

Oregon Coast Camping

Our next trip took us to the coast west of us. We camped with Chris’ parents in the Florence area for 4th of July weekend. That’s the coastal town we’ve all spent the most time in, so I won’t go into detail about it. But after dropping most of the kids off to hang out with grandparents, Chris and I (and the 11-year-old who wanted to go with us) headed north to Cape Perpetua. We wanted to visit Cook’s Chasm. Stopping first at the visitor’s center, we discovered that it was whale season. We walked out onto the observation deck, and guess what? We saw a whale! In all the times I’ve visited the coast, I’ve never seen one, even during high whale season. It was awesome! Chris and kiddo and I were so excited. We saw it come up a few times. After we went back to Florence, we spent the rest of the weekend bumming around with relatives at the campground, the dunes at South Jetty Beach, and Old Town Florence. We ate at Mo’s, of course! And got stamps in our passports. (They have a passport flyer where you earn stuff if you go to all the Mo’s restaurants). Even though it’s just our coastal town that we visit every year, it was a fun trip!

Mount Hood: Alpine Slides and Timberline Lodge

The next adventure we went on was a day trip to Mount Hood up by Portland. Oregon’s highest mountain, at 11,239 feet/3,425 meters high, has lots of fun things to do in the summer! We went specifically for the alpine slides at Ski-Bowl Adventure Park in Government Camp. Chris wisely convinced me to pre-purchase the pass where we each got two trips down the slides, instead of the pass where we each got one trip and then got to do some things at the other side of the park. This worked out well, because most of the things we could have done with the second pass were things we could do around home. And after the first run down the mountain, we were glad of the opportunity to do it again, because you had a feel for it and could go faster that time. The alpine slides are just what they sound like: long slides down the side of the hill that you go down on little sleds you can control the speed on. To get up the hill, your tickets include the ski lift. We all paired off and enjoyed the scenic ride. It was our kids’ first time on a ski lift. Our 6-year-old, was nervous the first ride up. But then on the second ride up, he kept saying “This is so relaxing!” It was adorable. And speaking of him, his ticket was free! He was just small enough to ride for free with an adult. So he rode down the first time with Chris, and then with me. The rest of the kids had their own sled ride. My favorite part was that on the way down, you’re facing the top part of Mt. Hood, and it was gorgeous in the sunshine! Plus we passed wildflowers in the meadow as we cruised.

But the day didn’t end there. We drove up to Timberline Lodge, a stately CCC-era structure high up on Mt. Hood where the trees stop growing. The older girls bummed around in the large game room with Chris while the younger two kids wanted to “hike” with me up higher. We walked a little ways on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and then doubled back to a little glacial valley with snow in it. The kids saw some nice international tourists playing in the snow and joined in, making snow angels and snowmen. Soon we realized that was part of the ski run, and had to watch for snowboarders coming down the mountain. Yes, you can ski year-round here! Chris and I want to go back sometime and spend a whole day writing and hanging out in the big room in the lodge with the center fireplace. Mount Hood is a magical place! We ended the day by eating out at the Tollgate Inn in Sandy, a touristy but affordable, family-friendly eatery/bakery/gift shop (with built-in saloon, too).

Seattle

Our next trip was another overnighter: Seattle! Our youngest had been begging us to see the Space Needle all year. And Chris found out about a free art show for pop culture and anime art. So we decided to go. Finding a place to stay was tricky, because we are a big family and hotels are expensive. I found a couple state park campgrounds with spots, and almost reserved them. But then my cousin James and his wife offered for us to stay with them at their home on the JBLM base south of Tacoma. It was right off of I-5! It was fun to visit them, and kind of neat to go onto the military base. Chris and I had been on one before, but it was new for the kids. And we heard an Apache helicopter fly right over us in the middle of the night!

In the morning, we headed north to Seattle. We got our tickets to go up the Space Needle and then played a bit in the Seattle Center. When I was a kid, the Space Needle was the most touristy thing that my parents ever took us to. They didn’t have much money, but splurged on tickets to the top. So we had to take our kids, too. The wait for our allotted time was fun! There is now a really neat playground under the Space Needle. The kids played there for a long time, climbing and swinging and spinning. We also rode the monorail and ate at a Mod Pizza in the old Armory building. But then our time finally came. We got in the waiting line, which takes a while to inch our way through. Fortunately, there are fun exhibits along the walls on the way, and a great view of a 10-foot-high Lego model Space Needle down below in the gift shop, complete with Lego characters all around the observation deck. We saw Batman and the Joker and many others. This made Chris very happy. Eventually we got to the elevator and rode to the top. The tour guide had a dry humor and had to bellow out information and directions over the crowd, but then we walked out to the observation deck. The experience was overwhelming for some of our kids. The view! The tiny buildings and cars below us! Our usually daredevil 15-year-old realized one of her first limits/fears: heights. After we all went outside to the outdoor deck and then came back in, she and one or two other kids stayed closer to the center while we spun slowly around on glass floors inside. The others laid down on the floor and watched the view change, fascinated. Eventually we left and wandered outside. We found a grassy area with an awesome metal sculpture and settled there to unwind after the exhilarating trip up the structure.

Then we walked to the hotel with the art show. The event was a bit underwhelming for us, who thought there would be more happening. It was really just a venue to buy people’s art, which was cool, but not much to do other than look at art. One guest came dressed up in cosplay, and the event sold expensive bartender-made Butterbeers, but other than that, we just looked at art. There were paintings featuring Star Wars, LOTR, Harry Potter, Marvel comics, anime movies, and shows, Alice in Wonderland, and others. One artist drew them all sitting on the toilet. We did each get a free small print, so that was cool!

From there, we thought about driving north to see the Fremont Bridge Troll giant sculpture, but the kids were exhausted, so we headed home. Unfortunately, our car died as we puttered around the Lake Oswego/Tigard exit area trying to find food. We managed to get the car to a nearby hotel after eating at a Subway, and the next day, Chris’ parents came up with a tow truck to get us. Chris and I were bummed to shell out a lot of money for a hotel, but that was some of our kids’ favorite part of the trip! They never get to stay in hotels. We had to get two rooms, so the kids enjoyed us having two bathrooms for once. The worst part was there was a bar next door to my side of the hotel (Chris and some of the kids had a room across the hall) that had crazy drunk people having fights all night. I eventually called the front desk and they got the bar to quiet people down so I could sleep. The kids with me slept through it, thank goodness! In the morning, we tried to eat at a really neat-looking theme restaurant next to the hotel, but it was closed, so we ate breakfast at Carl’s Jr. Eventually we got picked up and made it home. Our SUV was out of commission for a while and a few more times this year, so the rest of our adventures since then have been shorter and had less kids at a time.

Fort Umpqua and Florence Area (Again)

I took a week of vacation the last week of August. Mostly I painted the house and caught up on other things, but also had some end-of-summer fun with the kids. I took a few of them to swim at the outdoor Amazon pool while Chris worked at the restaurant one sunny day. The tall scary waterslide was open this year! Our 15-year-old and I tried it. The younger kids had fun just wading in the water. While the older two were visiting grandparents on the weekend, Chris and I took the younger three to Elkton. Where (and what) is Elkton, you ask? It’s a tiny town between Drain (another tiny town, a good ways south of Eugene on old Highway 99) and the coastal town of Reedsport. What’s to do there, you ask? The Elkton Community Education Center! Okay, it’s way cooler than it sounds. There’s a butterfly garden with teenage docents, getting their first work experience. And my favorite part? Fort Umpqua! It’s a replica of the old Hudson’s Bay trading post that was there in the 1800s. We timed our trip well. Upon arriving, we discovered it was the weekend of Fort Umpqua Days, a local festival. This meant good food, tents of trinkets to buy and games to play, and the best part: people dressed in 1800s garb leading activities for kids to do. Our 7-year-old is now determined that we buy an apple cider press. Our 8-year-old made a cornhusk doll. Our 11-year-old bought freeze-dried fruit rings. And Chris got a huge kick out of watching the demonstrators light the cannon. It was loud! After filling up on fresh grilled burgers to support a local charity, we let the kids decide if we should drive home or make a loop by going to the coast.

Of course, we went to the coast. Looking at the GPS on my phone, I noticed tiny Carter Lake on Hwy 101. No, not Crater Lake; Carter Lake! We just had to stop and check it out, since we’re the Carters! The campground leading to it seemed very family-friendly, and the lake shore had sand and critters galore to please the kids. We figured it was probably warmer there than the beach itself, so we let the kids play until they got hungry, and then went to Old Town to eat at Mo’s for the second time that summer. The bayfront wasn’t enough coast for the kids, so we made it to North Jetty beach right at dusk. Unlike the blue sky at Elkton earlier in the day, the clouds were thick and heavy over the beach by then, so we didn’t stay long. But we enjoyed the last few minutes of beach in the summer.

Fall Fun

In September, Chris and I took my car up to Multnomah Falls for our anniversary, where we splurged on a delicious brunch at the lodge there. We had also planned to take the kids up to Mount Angel for their famous Oktoberfest celebration that month. But with both cars acting up, we decided to stay closer to home and find some local little Oktoberfest fun. We tried a couple places one weekend in September: Detering Orchards near Coburg with a few kids and later the Public House in Springfield with some of the others. Neither really had much going on in terms of Oktoberfest. Detering had some Polish sausages and beer, and the rest of the festivities were their normal fall activities. That didn’t bother the kids. They fed goats, picked Asian pears, and rode the cow train. Chris was happy with the fancy jars of treats we bought at the farm stand, like candied jalapeños, pickled quail eggs, and black walnut syrup. The Public House always has good food, but there didn’t seem to be much in the way of German fare by the time we got there. There were a couple menu items with Beer Cheese on them that were tasty. But we still wanted a more authentic Oktoberfest. So when October rolled around, we went to the Bier Stein restaurant in Eugene for their celebration. This one was very festive! They have a little German food on the menu usually, but had a special menu for the day. I had the flamkuchen, a dish that I discovered on my second trip to Germany. It was delicious! Chris joined the Stein Hoist competition (at my urging) and got second place. There were also photo ops and supplies for kids to make a pretzel necklace. We did all this after watching the ceremonial keg tapping by a recently retired politician. We still hope to make it to Mount Angel next year, but we’ll probably go to the Bier Stein, too!

For the rest of the autumn, we’ve taken advantage of the sunshine on busy days by hitting little local trails with some of the kids. I hiked to the top of Skinner’s Butte with the 12-year-old while the rest of the kids played at the park at the base. A week later, Chris and I hiked to the top of Mt. Baldy with the 15, 8, and 6- year olds. They had fun playing in big color-changing trees, and Chris had fun lounging on the bench at the top! The next weekend, I took the 15-year-old and her friend to the ice rink at the fairgrounds to try her hand at ice skating for a birthday present. She did great! I guess that one’s not in the sunshine, but it was a new adventure for one of the kids. She thinks the whole family should go this winter. Other sunny day treks this fall have included walking the Weyerhauser Trail at the Thurston Hills Rec Area with the younger two kids, walking the river bike path in Eugene with a few of the kids and one of their friends, and walks to our local city park to see the fall foliage and play under the evergreen giants.

The kids visit their grandparents on Chris’ side frequently, and love playing in their pool in the summer. In the fall, they like running around my mom’s country property. One weekend we did s’mores and hot dogs outside in the fire pit, and for Thanksgiving my brother brought a golf cart for them to drive around. The kids loved that! And gave us parents a heart attack! And now we’re headed into the Christmas holiday season. This last week, some of us from my office went up to Portland for our work’s big Christmas party at a fancy hotel in Portland. They hired Party Alpacas for photo ops! And the lobby had a Neuschwanstein Castle made out of gingerbread. So much fun!

What were your favorite outdoorsy or travel activities this year? What are you excited for with the upcoming holiday or winter season? Feel free to post in the comments below! Merry Christmas, if I don’t get a chance to post again before then!