Spencer's Spring Break Trip

This post is called Spencer's Spring Break Trip because it was his idea (or desire) that we not spend Spring Break the same way we spent mid-Winter break, which was hanging out at home and pretty much not doing anything. We were up-in-the-air for quite awhile about where we were going to go. We thought about going to eastern Washington to visit family and friends there. That didn't pan out because some were going elsewhere and the pass between here and there apparently didn't get the memo that it is now officially Spring. In fact during the time that we would have been traveling over it, it snowed 2 feet and was closed for a time for avalanche. Good thing we opted not to head east of the mountains!

Where to go, where to go?? We talked about the Olympic Peninsula, Ocean Shores and other destinations. For some reason Spencer really settled on Portland, so that is where we decided to go. Dennis & Spencer made hotel reservations (in the ghetto of Portland--at least that's what it seemed like when we got there) for Wednesday and Thursday night. We left around 9am on Wednesday in a driving rain that was turning to snow as we headed south. (Apparently the mountain pass wasn't the only place that didn't get the Spring memo). It rained all the way to Portland, non-stop. We arrived at the ghetto around 1pm. (We had to turn around just before getting to the freeway to get the GPS--which thank goodness we did or we would have spent all the time lost in the ghetto.)

The first thing we did was visit Pittock Mansion. Which is the former home of the founder of the Portland Oregonian newspaper. It was very beautiful, with intrique hardwood floors throughout it's 12,000 square feet (4,000 each floor). The picture of Spencer at the grand piano is from our tour. There were about 10 people on a tour with us and when we came to the "sitting room" the tour guide asked if anyone played the piano and we all pointed at Spencer. He was a little reluctant but finally agreed to play something. He sat down and played a simple version of Beethoven's Fur Elise. I expected him just to do a scale or something. Everyone was very impressed. It was a very beautiful home.

We returned to ghetto, swam in the pool and settled in, I thought for the night. The boys however got restless so we made a visit to "Oregon's biggest mall" which is pretty much the same size as Bellevue Square with all the same stores. They were happy though.

On Thursday we had talked about taking a paddlewheel tour on the Columbia, but I let the boys decide and the opted to visit OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry) and the zoo. I think it was a good choice. OMSI is pretty much like the Pacific Science Center here in Seattle only bigger and better. The had a really cool (at least I thought) Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, where they had models of many of the "inventions" he concocted and one whole floor just about the Mona Lisa and these infrared photos this guy took of the painting. It was pretty cool. The boys of course zoomed through that and I came out about 20 minutes later. The rest of the time we spent exploring all the different things there were to do. The goggle picture is from the "Chemistry" room.

The other pictures (except the one of them in the "face" which is in front of a stadium downtown) are all from the zoo. It is a very nice zoo with lots of the same animals as ours. It is a nice walk and you can see where they are updating alot of their exhibits much like our zoo is doing. It is nice that alot of the zoos are changing to make the habitats more "real lifelike" and using the natural surroundings to enhance the whole setting. Their zoo is set against a hillside but all the "hiking" was very gradual. It was a nice hike and luckily for us it didn't start raining again until we were leaving.

We finished off the day in the pool again and got up early this morning to come home so Tucker could make his soccer practice. Everyone had a good time (even Tucker) and we were glad we got to get out of town a bit thanks to Spencer!