Oregon-pt.1

Our Anniversary was spent at the Walmart in Hood River after traveling through the Columbia River Gorge. Then past Portland to the charming little town of McMinnville. Our RV park sat next door to the Air Museum where Howard Hughes' plane, the Spruce Goose was housed. Wine or another air museum--I, of course chose wine, it was a tougher call for Terry but in the end he choose the wine tasting for our time here as well. It was cold- people were in winter coats--it is late June!!! The wine tastings, particularly good at Willamette (rhymes with damnit) Valley Wines, were clustered in town and it seemed they all started to taste the same after a couple. We did go to the beautiful Brooks Winery which had a view of Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood and 2 others. Anniversary Dinner was spent at Restaurant 411 in town and featured yummy candied bacon and dill pickle soup. Friday afternoon we went to a street festival with lots of locals and talked to a Mother and son from Virginia traveling from Yellowstone to Seattle and another man who had come to UT for the Oregon/UT football game. Saturday morning we left for Cannon Beach and the drive up Hwy 101. There was a parade at Tillamook (home of the Tillamook Dairy a big dairy on the west coast, think Purity Dairy). The 2 hour drive took about 5 hours but once we found the Pacific Ocean it was beautiful--big rocks and a true robin's egg blue.

The Gorge looked like mountains covered with velvet

The Columbia River is big and wide

Lots of wineries dot the shores

McMinnville, OR  (they said it was named after the TN home of Jack Daniels)

Cloudy sunset in McMinnville--notice the winter coat

This was good wine-first introduced to us by Robin and Julia
when they came up here for the football game

Great anniversary dinner (a little late)--43 years!

Brooks Winery had good wine, good people watching and a beautiful view

Flowers too.