Portland & Central Oregon

Believe it or not, the rest of our Oregon adventures were waterfall-free… OK maybe one more waterfall.

Thor’s Well & Cape Perpetua

We had seen Thor’s Hammer back in Bryce Canyon and it was time to see Thor’s Well in Yachats, OR. Thor’s Well is a large hole in the rocks along the Pacific Coast. It was likely formed by a sea cave caving in.

Truth be told, I’m not much into Thor or any of his super hero friends, but watching the ocean water be sucked down into oblivion before surging back up and spewing from the surface was mesmerizing.

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South Beach

On the Oregon coast, we stayed at an RV resort called Whaler’s Rest which happened to be just a short walk from the beach. The dogs had been to the beach in Texas, but this was their first time at the Pacific Ocean.

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Pacific City Beach

We continued along the coast up to Pacific City where one of my best friends from high school met up with us! I had been telling Joel that we were planning this year-long adventure since 2019 and promised we’d roll through the Portland area and see him. It’s been a long time; here’s a throw back picture with Joel from my bachelorette more than 4 years ago:

Joel brought along his equally awesome girlfriend Julia (whom we had never met) and their new fur baby Bear. We went for a stroll along the nearby beach.

Same as with Sean, Joel’s beard seems to have grown bushier with age…

These were the first humans we’ve spent any length of time with since March and it was so so nice to hang out with them.

Joel & fam had just driven to the coast for the day, so we bid them ado for a few days until we would also make our way east to Portland.

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Cape Kiwanda

Just right over the hill from the beach by our RV park was Cape Kiwanda.

Cape Kiwanda is a state natural area perched atop a tall hill of orange rock and deep sand. There are beaches on either side of the hill.

We climbed to the top (i.e. Bruno sprinted up and dragged me along after him). Up the hill there are paths winding along the edge toward the ocean and up even higher to more sea views.

After walking higher to the very top, you must trudge down the steepest hill of extremely thick sand. If you let the momentum take you, it’s fun to standing-slide down to the bottom.

We timed our visit at low tide so that we could look around the tide pools at the base of Cape Kiwanda.

I don’t know if it just happened to be our timing in Oregon, but the beaches here seem to have a permanent fog on the horizon.

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For our 4th wedding anniversary, we found a pretty empty brewery on the coast to celebrate.

At home, we continued the celebration by drinking the bottle of wine we swiped from Sandals Bahamas where we got married four years ago… and to our shock and delight, it was still good!

Four years is the ‘fruit & flowers’ anniversary, and while we spread it over a couple of weeks, we did all the things fruit and flower.

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International Rose Test Garden

First stop in Portland: the International Rose Test Garden located in the massive Washington Park. Started in 1924, the rose garden now holds over 10,000 rose bushes and 650 varieties of roses.

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Tryon Creek State Natural Area

Next we met back up with Joel, Julia, and Bear to explore Tryon Creek State Natural Area. If you want a city with lots of parks right in its midst, Portland is the city for you.

Joel climbed this tree so that, reminiscent of our high school years, I could take some senior portraits, now available in billfold size.

We said our final farewells before heading further east to an area called the Fruit Loop!

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Fruit Loop

The Hood River Fruit Loop is a 35-mile scenic loop in Hood River Valley weaving through fruit orchards, wineries, cider distilleries, and flower fields. This is my version of Disney World. Let the anniversary festivities continue!

There are a handful of dog-friendly locations on the fruit loop so of course we favored those, but there are so many beautiful spots I’d love to come back to visit some day.

Hood Crest Winery

For our first anniversary celebration location on the Fruit Loop, we went to Hood Crest Winery. Wine counts as fruit. Write that down.

All of the wineries are now doing pandemic-friendly, self-serve wine tastings. They bring you small portions of each wine all at once with freshly-printed menus with wine profile descriptions.

So we leisurely sipped our wines and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. I was in heaven.

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Tamanawas Falls

People always seem surprised that Bruno can hack it on all of our hikes. I just wanted to show you all some video evidence of how excited he gets before every single one of our hikes. As soon as we stop the car he starts whining and barking for us to hoist him out so that we can begin the day’s adventure. Bruno loves to hike.

We couldn’t leave Oregon without seeing one more waterfall. Just outside of the Fruit Loop is the 3.3-mile trail to Tamanawas Falls.

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Packer Bakery

Did I mention that nearly every location on the Fruit Loop has gorgeous views of Mount Hood?

Lots of the bakeries and fruit stands along the Fruit Loop advertise huckleberry and marionberry (exclusive to Oregon) milkshakes. At Packer Bakery though, we couldn’t resist the chocolate raspberry milkshake.

It was so good. We would’ve gone back for more the next day but they are closed on Tuesdays. Instead we visited another fruit stand and got one each: a huckleberry and a marionberry milkshake. They were also delicious but a chocolate drizzle would’ve put them over the top.

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Mt View Orchards & Grateful Vineyard

Finally we went to my #1 most desired fruit anniversary activity: cherry picking! Cherries are my absolute favorite fruit.

Sean wants everyone to know that maraschino cherries (like in Shirley Temples and cocktails) are total garbage, and if you haven’t had actual cherries, like he hadn’t, go get yourself some because they’re delicious.

There is one dog-friendly ‘U-pick’ fruit orchard on the Fruit Loop: Mt View Orchards. If the Fruit Loop is Disney World, Mt View Orchards is Magic Kingdom. They have orchards, U-pick fruit, a fruit stand, a cider distillery, a vineyard & winery, and a new brewery. And it’s all dog-friendly!

And so we just stayed there forever and lived happily ever after. The end.

…just kidding but it was tempting.

They grow all different kinds of fruit, but lucky for us, July is the perfect time for cherry picking. They had bing, rainier, and lapin cherry varieties.

They also have a steer named Carlos.

In total we picked about 5lbs of the juiciest, tastiest cherries.

When we were done cherry picking, their winery wasn’t quite open yet, so we bought a bottle of cider from the fruit stand to sip in the car until we could walk over to the winery.

We were the first ones to the winery and had the whole spacious, beautiful outdoor area to ourselves.

We also had the best pizza of my entire life. We got the special which had fresh cherries straight from the orchards. Apparently that’s a pretty common topping in this area and I can see why. I’m drooling a little just looking at this picture again.

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Bonus Pictures:

We sadly dragged ourselves away from the wonderful Fruit Loop and crossed state lines into Washington.

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Bonair Winery & Vineyards

Near Yakima, WA we tried our first Harvest Host: Bonair Winery & Vineyards. I can’t tell you for sure yet whether we’d recommend Harvest Hosts because we’ve had some issues contacting locations since, but this first experience was fantastic.

In short, you can pay for a Harvest Hosts membership and you can park/camp for “free” for one night at any participating location (vineyards, farms, breweries, museums, etc.). They do recommend that you spend ~$20 at each location because the hosts don’t get paid directly by Harvest Hosts; that isn’t a big deal for us because we’d be buying wine somewhere anyway so why not try something new and support these small businesses.

We parked our trailer right by the grape vines, bought a couple of bottles of wine, and sat outside in the beautiful weather and watched the sun set over the mountains in the distance.

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Meanwhile Sean’s still baking, I’m still painting, and we’re both still planning our next adventures day-by-day.

I just want everyone to know that while these blog posts are always filled with amazing sights, and this post in particular has some wineries and breweries… we spend a lot of time and energy trying to pick adventures where we can properly socially distance outside, we typically avoid doing anything around people on weekends, we wear masks, and we cook nearly all of our own meals.

It’s not all rainbows and butterflies all of the time (everyone say a little ‘thank you’ to your automatic dishwashers right now), but we’re making the best of what was a very long-anticipated sabbatical. And we feel much safer than we would in Houston right now. We are very thankful that technology allows us to keep in touch with everyone and to share our journey with you.

Wishing you all happiness and good physical & mental health!