Weekend in Oregon!

Your mom and I, on a complete whim, decided to take a drive to Oregon this holiday weekend. Here's how it happened: Danielle's good friend April came to visit and also to see her friends in the Fresno band Fierce Creatures, who were stopping in Davis on their way north to tour in Oregon and Washington. They said that the following night they were going to Bend, Oregon, and then Portland after that. On a lark, we said, "We'll come with you!" The band even ended up staying in our apartment! Then, early on Friday morning after only a few hours sleep, we set off on the long drive north for a bonafide adventure!

They're so damn cute... 

This was the first glimpse we got of Mount Shasta as we headed north out of California. It's so big you see it for hours as you drive up the interstate. 

Then I finally got a good shot of it as we passed the nearby town and got north of the peak. 

Not long after we were in Oregon, a first for your mom and me. 

Our band friends' first stop was in Bend, a small, interesting town in the hills of Oregon that interested me because a really renowned brewery is there, Deschutes. We had dinner at their pub before the show. 

Their show was awesome! It was at a very bizarre bar called The Horned Hand. 

This was their first time in Oregon, and the crowd was awesome. These folks were dancing like mad! 

Amanda stayed with us in our hotel that night and then we all got breakfast in the morning before heading to Portland. 

I didn't realize we'd be heading into the mountains, and we gained a lot of elevation quickly on our way to Portland over Mount Hood. It got very snowy. 

On one short downhill slope, I lost control of the car and we spun out! Luckily, we weren't going fast and we plowed into this snowbank head first and nobody got hurt and the car was still in decent shape. Your mom and I are holding the broken fender which cracked off. 

Somehow we did a much better job getting the chains on this time than we did the last time we tried near Lake Tahoe. They made an awful loud clanking noise as we crawled through the blizzard. We kept stopping to make sure nothing was wrong, and every now and then in the rear view mirror you could see some chunk of the fender fall out and go flying behind us. What a trip! 

We finally made it to Portland in the evening and one of our first stops after dinner was Powell's, a gigantic used book store your mom had read about somewhere. She found some cool old editions of some classic books. 

Fierce Creatures played that night at the house of a friend of theirs in Portland. It was a small basement, but they rocked , and we enjoyed our third show of theirs in as many days. 

I woke up a bit earlier than the girls the next morning and went on a long walk with my camera through Portland. There are bridges all over the place over the Willamette River which goes right through town.

On the way out of town we stopped for an awesome breakfast at the Pancake House. 

The drive home is always longer, and this time we had almost 600 miles to go. The sun started dropping and the Oregon wilderness along the highway was a pretty sight. 

Half way there, we stopped near the border in a small town called Ashland, where I knew another good brewpub was ripe for the trying. The girls were very humble letting me drag them to these places : )