Oregon - Part 3 - Multnomah falls

Saturday night after we got back to our hotel room we packed up the things that we knew we wouldn't need and got the car mostly packed so that we could have a slower morning Sunday morning as we were getting ready to leave Oregon. We had breakfast at our hotel every morning. They had an "extended Continental breakfast." There were so many options, all pretty much mediocre, but with lots of options we at least had lots of mediocre food every morning instead of a little. We discovered that Hudson LOVES canned pears. Sunday morning they had peaches instead of pears. Before trying pears Hudson would eat canned peaches, but after discovering pears he now turns up his nose to the peaches. We had waffles, cereal, biscuits and gravy, bagels with cream cheese, muffins, danishes, cinnamon rolls, fruit (fresh and canned), and orange or apple juice to drink.

After breakfast we finished packing things up and loading the car then checked over the room one last time to make sure we didn't forget anything (which somehow we still did.) and we were on our way to Idaho.

The drive to Idaho was BEAUTIFUL as well. About 30 minutes outside of Portland there is an area called the Columbia River Gorge where there are tons of huge, beautiful waterfalls. With high water this year they were all along the highway, it was beautiful lush green. We stopped at Multnomah falls and hiked up as a family. It is the second highest waterfall in the continental united states. There are a few different hikes you can take there. You can just stop in a parking lot and see the falls from across the freeway, you can go under the freeway (there's a tunnel under it to the other side where the falls are) and you can go to the base or you can go to a bridge that is just above the lower falls, or you can continue your hike to the top of the falls. We only went as far as the bridge. It was amazing.



I went into the information center while I was waiting for Spencer to take Roman to the bathroom. The bridge that we hiked up to is called Benson Bridge for Simon Benson, who owned the falls and had the original bridge built there in the early part of the 1900s. Before his death, Benson gave Multnomah Falls to the City of Portland, which later transferred ownership to the USDA Forest Service.



After stopping at Multnomah falls we got back on the road and drove the rest of the way to Idaho to Spencer's Aunt Cathy and Uncle Bob's house. They were nice enough to let us stay with them Sunday night. We got to their house while they were at a friend's house, but it was such a nice evening we spent the time on their patio enjoying a nice summer evening, OUT of the car.



We had planned to just get up Monday morning and head for home. Roman had seen Cathy and Bob's pool the night before and he asked Cathy if he could go swimming. She asked me us if we wanted to stay, and so we did. We spent a couple of hours in the pool with Cathy that morning (While Spencer spent time inside on the phone with the IRS, working.) Hudson was falling asleep in the pool, again, so I got out of the pool with him and got him dressed. We were finally on our way home just before 1 that afternoon and made it home around 7 that night.