After a long blogging hiatus, we thought we'd skip ahead to our most recent adventure...
What fun weekend we just had!
This past weekend we headed down to Tualitin, Oregon for a business trip to look at a dental equipment and cabinetry manufacturer called A-dec and check out what they had to offer. When we were invited to go visit the facility they called it a VIP trip and we didn't think much of it at the time, but they really spoiled us over the 3 days and 2 nights we were there. Welcome to the business world, I guess. We had a great time, learned about a great dental equipment supplier, and got to stay in a beautiful hotel by the water. Here's a picture of us in front of the hotel that they put us up in.
After the business portion of our trip, we headed down to visit our friends Brittany and Taylor at their house in Albany, OR. Taylor is a police officer in nearby Corvallis, so we headed over there for the day, walked along the Willamette River, did some shopping, visited an art show, saw Oregon State University's campus, and ate dinner at the Block 15 Brewery. Here are some pictures of us in front of a fountain at a riverside park
On our way home from Brittany & Taylor's house, we decided to stop by the Willamette Valley Vineyard and do a little bit of wine tasting. For anyone who hasn't tried it- they have the BEST Riesling! Yumm... we bought a few bottles, took some pictures of the incredible view from their tasting room, and hit the road again.
Next up... a few hour pit stop at the Clark County Fair, where we played some games, won an awesome prize (not really- it was a black velvet pilow that said "Vegas" on it), looked at some smelly farm animals, and tried our luck at the fast pitch contest. Kelly set the record for her age group by throwing the fastest pitch of the day. Please note she tied with an 11 year old, pretty impressive :)
It was starting to get late and we still had almost 3 hours of driving left, so we scarfed some delicious County Fair bbq sandwich and curly fries and got back on the road. After coming to a complete stop at three separate car accidents, which significantly extended our remaining "3 hour drive" on the way home, we rolled in about 10 pm and hopped in bed.
All in all, we had a blast exploring Oregon, seeing good friends, and having some random adventures on our leisurely drive home. All that fun and we never even hit up Portland! Oh well, maybe next time.
Next up, we (ok- mostly Kyle) pined over a few more maps to figure out where to begin our adventure and we decided to head over to Roche Harbor for a delicious dinner at McMillin's. Great food and an even better view from our table that overlooked the harbor. After dinner, we drove over to this lighthouse just in time to catch a beautiful sunset. We had made the brilliant decision to bring the picnic backpack that the Burdicks had given to us for a wedding present, which ended up being a perfect. We laid out our blanket and poured ourselves some wine to stay awhile and marvel at the beautiful evening. And did we mention that our B&B had a hot tub? We fully took advantage of the empty hot tub when we got back to the B&B and shared a little vino while looking up at the stars. Great and relaxing way to end the evening!
With winter quickly approaching and an expected severity not seen in the last 100 years in this part of the country, Kelly and I decided it was finally time to part ways with her beloved Convertible V6 Mustang. We had been researching compact SUV's for the last several weeks and just could not come up with a vehicle that we both loved, so the decision was not quickly made. However, this weekend we saw an ad for a 2011 Ford Escape 4x4 at quite a good price, so we went and took a peek. It turned out that one was a manual transmission, which wouldn't work so well for Kelly, so we looked at the Escape on the showroom floor. Sun/Moonroof, Sync Audio System, All-wheel drive, V6 engine with 6800 lbs. towing capacity (insert Tim Allen grunt), and enough safety features to keep my wife as far out of danger as possible. Done deal. The first vehicle that Kelly and I were both super stoked about. We drove that thing home with huge grins on our faces and McDonalds in our bellies (we were starved after a 6 hour test driving and negotiating process). I spent a few hours watching the Huskies prove how terrible they are (41-0 to Stanford at home, I hate those smart kids), and Kelly wrote a paper for school. We didn't make it more than a couple hours before we both hopped in the Escape and went for a late night ice cream run so we could play with the Sync Audio system some more. It's very awesome, very confusing, and very fun. Around 11pm we realized that we never carved our pumpkins. Whoops. No problem, we didn't get a single trick or treater anyway. I'm beginning to think we'll never get rid of the leftover candy from the candy bar at our wedding. Oh well. If you want to go for a spin, we are looking for any excuse to take our new toy out. I call driving!
