Hiking!

At last. Sunday was the only day with no rain in the forecast (we fixated on TWC every morning) so we reserved this day for hitting the trails. About 40 minutes from downtown Portland we found the trailhead for Eagle Creek, which Shawn thought would be our best bet for seeing waterfalls. We parked our car next to the creek and I saw a two-foot long fish (I swear) jumping around, trying to swim upstream. Words just wouldn't do this trail justice so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, although pictures can't even capture how very vast the forest was and how very small I felt. We had the trail mostly to ourselves, which was great, and we had about four uninterrupted hours of quietly wandering through the trees.


I loved how all the tree branches were coated with bright green moss.


Jen, Anne, Susie, Shawn - taken by one of the few other hikers we saw on the trail


Kind of washed out but I liked the streak of light I caught from the sun (All these are shot with a point and click Canon digital camera...)




One of the seven waterfalls on the Eagle Creek trail

I could have hiked all day but we were freezing and didn't really have enough food, so we headed back to the car to drive to the cheesy Multnomah Falls lodge restaurant.

The food prices were crazy expensive but we were so hungry and cold we didn't care. (I ate with my beanie and wind jacket on). After some hot chocolate and a gigantic meal, we went outside to look briefly at Multnomah Falls, the second highest waterfall in the US.



You would think I'd have been more in awe at this, but honestly, the nutty tourists running everywhere (and the fact that you can see the falls from the highway) kind of killed it for me. We were pretty tired so we went back to Shawn's to shower and get ready to go out again.

The last thing we wanted to do in Portland was go to the Mission Theatre, which is an old church converted into a movie theatre that serves greasy food and microbrews while you watch your movie.


Sign outside Mission Theatre signifying its place on the National Historic Register (go go Gadget flash...)

Susie and Shawn hadn't seen The Dark Knight yet, and conveniently it was still playing at Mission. Drinking beer during the movie was fun, although I had already seen it and was worn out from three days of drinking and running around, hence I ended up falling asleep. Twice. Oops.

We had to leave Shawn's at 6 am the next day to catch our flight, so after the movie we went home to pack up the huge mess we had made in the apartment and try to get a bit of sleep...