From Portland continued...

Alright, sorry about that! For some reason I had to wait for Boris's computer to catch up with every single sentence I typed, so writing was taking forever. Let's try this again, shall we?

Well, I left off with Mt. Lassen and its amazing views. Before we left Lassen for the night, we made dinner in the parking lot, and saw a bunch of people setting up telescopes in the parking lot! Apparently it was the week of the "Lassen Star Party," a week-long camping event where over 200 people had scopes and were looking at the summer sky... the Milky Way, faraway galaxies, etc... cool! Apparently the extra elevation and dry weather made the star gazing particularly clear.

So that night, we left Lassen and drove most of the way to Mt. Shasta, before we parked our car on the side of the road in National Forest and camped for free for the evening (yay!). The next day, we drove the rest of the way into the town of Mt. Shasta and up to the trailheads, the closest we could get to the top without actually making the multi-day mountaineering excursion ourselves! It was gorgeous!

That same day, after checking out Shasta, we worked our way through the last little bit of California, and crossed over into Oregon. It was sad to go, since we had so much fun in Cali, but it was also time to move on. Just as soon as we passed through the Mt. Shasta area, the sky got very hazy and smoky, and we had to turn on the A/C since the air was thick and acrid with the smell of something burning. While we were stopping for lunch, we discovered that there was a wildfire (started by lightning) that was causing the smoke, and the shifting wind carried it for miles! Luckily we drove out of the smoke before reaching the Crater Lake area.

On our way into the park, we stopped off at a trailhead for the Pacific Crest Trail, a trail that Jeremy has wanted to hike on for a long time. He went for a little jaunt (which made him very happy) while I hung back at the car, and chatted with a couple of hikers that were on their way through. After that, we drove the loop around the rim of Crater Lake. It was beautiful! The sky was a little hazy, so the view was not crystal clear, but it cleared up by the next morning. We had a picnic dinner at the lake, and camped inside the park boundary, where we met an awesome couple from San Francisco. We had a great time chatting with them around a warm campfire.

The next day, we got showers at the park, did some more sightseeing at the Lake, and continued on our way north. We took some random little back-road as a shortcut to the Eugene area and Rt 5, which ended up being really beautiful! Then we stopped for a fantastic Thai dinner in Eugene. We thought about spending the night in Eugene, but neither of us was impressed or terribly excited about it, so we just drove the rest of the way to Portland!

We have been in Portland ever since. A little road-weary and needing some relaxation, we are about to spend our third night here. We are staying at the Hawthorne Hostel, a cool old house with some interesting people and a great location. In the interest of saving a little cash, we are camped in the backyard, which is much cheaper than actually sleeping in a bed! Yesterday we walked around downtown, soaking in the culture and getting a feel for the city. It feels extremely comfortable, and doesn't really feel like the largest city in Oregon! It doesn't seem like a terribly foreign or unfamiliar place... it is laid-back, and there are lots of wonderful things going on, lots of good food, and the people are friendly. It is also a very bicycle-centered town, with bike lanes everywhere.

So after getting a good overview of the city yesterday (in addition to getting a coupon for a free appetizer at this AWESOME restaurant called South Park, where I also got the best gazpacho I have ever had in my LIFE), we had a few activities in mind for today. First we went to the Japanese Gardens in Washington Park, which were gorgeous! It was so very relaxing, all of the natural sculpture, shaped trees, rock gardens, waterfalls, and winding paths were just so beautiful. Then we had an early dinner at a famous Irish Pub downtown. Afterwards, Jeremy and I went to see Body Worlds 3, one of those "Bodies" exhibits that uses donated "plastinized" human bodies to demonstrate how the human body is constructed and functions. It was amazing! I love human biology and anatomy anyway, so it was extra exciting to see the body almost as it looks during life, only depicted in such a way that you can see all of the different systems and how they interconnect. We also saw an interesting Omnimax movie afterwards, which accomplished much the same thing with some cool technology.

This evening, we've just been hanging out and relaxing. Tomorrow we will probably leave Portland, although I am not sure when. We are thinking of heading to the Oregon coast for a day or so, checking out Cannon Beach and Astoria. After that, we'll probably explore the Mt. Hood/Columbia River Gorge loop, before heading through the Mt. St. Helens area and continuing through Washington to Olympic National Park, and our final destination, Seattle. Whew!

Well, we are certainly packing everything in, but we are trying to keep this as vacation-like as we can. I wish I could post pictures, but unfortunately I don't have access to a computer with a CD drive that I can use! So the pictures will have to wait.

Well, I guess that is all for now. I am not sure when the next post will be, but stay tuned! :)