Our summer vacation took us to Oregon and California and I’ll be sharing our trip recap in parts, starting with our first few days in Portland, OR. As I’ve mentioned, Oregon was my 50th state, so we had to fit it into our plans somehow! (Dave had already been to Oregon with work, so his 50th state was North Dakota back in 2020).
Our trip began at the new Kansas City airport. Our old airport was compact and easy to navigate. Our new airport is modern and looks nicer than it did before. Our flight was at 9 PM and while it left on time, somehow some unknown storms popped up around Denver, where we were meant to stop and switch planes. So we ended up circling for over an hour, making our first flight almost twice as long as it was supposed to be.
They made announcements every so often, saying we had enough fuel to keep circling, but if we were redirected, we might have to return to Kansas City! I yelled at Dave because he’d just told me he’d never been on a diverted flight. Luckily the circles were big enough that I didn’t feel sick, and eventually we made it to Denver. When we got into the airport we heard them announcing that our flight to Portland was having a final boarding call, so we ended up running there, but we weren’t the only ones the flight was waiting for, so we made it with plenty of time. We landed in Oregon after 2AM Pacific Time – 4 AM for us.
After some issues getting an Uber / Lyft that we all (plus our luggage) could fit into, we got one driven by a super uptight guy who was very worried about our backpacks hitting his seats…but he got us where we were going. We stayed in an Air BnB for the first few days.
On our first day in Portland, we ate lunch at the Jewish Community Center’s cafe. I think this is the only food picture I took during the trip!
After lunch we took an Uber to downtown Portland to check out the city. First, Powell’s Books! I met up with an Instagram friend there and we had a fun time checking out the store.
After that, we basically walked around and tried to see what we could, even though it was rainy out.
Voodoo Doughnuts is a famous spot.
This isn’t the real Keep Portland Weird sign, but it was there!
We were there at the start of Fleet Week, so we checked out this buoy ship.
A famous sign:
Next we headed to the Rose Garden, which was beautiful and in bloom! The kids had fun borrowing my camera and taking pictures, so some of the pictures are by each of them, though I don’t know which!
Simon and Gabbie let me take their picture, while Zachary usually does not!
On Friday night we had dinner at our Air BnB, and on Saturday we visited the local Jewish community. On Sunday, we went downtown again to catch a street car to the airport and get a rental car for the rest of the trip.
Once we had the car, we drove into Washington, since the kids hadn’t yet been there and they are trying to get to 50 states too! I didn’t take any pictures there though.
Next week I’ll continue my recap with more of Oregon!
