Mimmsical Creations

I'm working on uploading photos! But, I took a ton, so it's slow going!!

The first part of our trip to Oregon was east of Portland to the Columbia River gorge! We headed directly for Multnomah Falls. It is truly a breathtaking waterfall!! I am blown away by it each time! It is 620 feet tall and the water just absolutely crashes down! It was running VERY full on this visit, so was even more impressive if that's possible!

We spent an hour or more just taking it all in! We got quite soaked from the spray from the falls! It was a very hot day (95 degrees+, very unusual I guess!) so the spray was welcome!

We then headed a few more miles down the gorge to The Dalles where we stayed for the night. We found a Mexican restaurant where we had eaten on our last trip - really yummy food!! (They had actually moved, so we couldn't find them right off, but wound up there!)

The next morning we headed back west (making our way to the coast) and took the time to drive the gorgeous Historic Columbia River highway! This takes you back along the hills and several other waterfalls! We saw Horsetail Falls, Wahkeena, and we hiked the short way back to see the Bridal Veil Falls. It was so amazingly gorgeous the whole way! All of the falls were spectacular. We timed it right! They were running pretty full and fast because of the spring run-off!

Then we made our way to the coast - I believe we met the ocean near Astoria. We stopped at several places we remembered from our first trip! It is so beautiful no matter where you stop and look! I absolutely do love the Oregon coast! (And it wasn't stinky this year - there were dead jelly fish last time because of a storm and it was smelly!) We stayed the first night in Lincoln City. We had an amazing dinner here - recommended by our hotel. It was a restaurant with an ocean view where I was able to get some truly yummy fish! (It was halibut encrusted with macadamia nuts, on top of garlic mashed potatoes, smothered with dungeness crab and parmesan cheese, and a sherry clam sauce. Wow! So unique and totally yummy!!!)

I'll continue with the story tomorrow - if you want to see more (MANY more) pictures - I'm uploading them to my flickr. There will be more, but I've got a good start at uploading them!

And in other news!! Mike is eligible for the job in Salem!!! WHOO HOO!! We're hoping he'll hear more news tomorrow. If he gets this, things are going to move at a whirlwind rate - like we'll be moved in six weeks! Yikes!! I'll keep you posted!

More stories and photos tomorrow!

My best friend Andrea and I left on Saturday morning to go visit my sisters in Siloam Springs, Arkansas! We flew into Tulsa, OK and drove the hour or so to their town.

I'll have loads of photos and stories to share, but for now... my green shoes! A wonderful vacation treat that I bought for me! :) I knew I would obsess about them if I didn't go ahead and buy them. Now I want to get my tattoo re-touched because it looks so cool with my new shoes!

Three Years ago in mid-February, my best friend Andrea and I (and her friend Stacey) were in New York City to celebrate her 30th birthday! I pulled out some of my stuff from our trip. We saw Wicked and ate at this amazing Italian place (more than once!) We went to museums (the MoMA being our favorite!) We played tourists! It was fantastic! Both of us were reminiscing and wanting to go back!!

2/11/08

2/12/08 (taken 2/12/05)

We were also there for the opening of the Installation Art Exhibit by Christo and Jeanne-Claude called "The Gates". This photo above is Central Park on that morning! Amazing sight. We didn't know about it until we arrived in NY. What a cool thing to be a part of!!

Really, the bulk of our vacation is focused on the ocean. I truly LOVED being so near the ocean that I could hear it all the time. And walk near it whenever I wanted to. We drove and saw other stuff, but all I wanted was to get back to the ocean!

We found a couple of local restaurants that we just loved, and we returned more than once during our week! The first is Whitey's - a local diner where we had breakfast three times! It is down-home, southern cooking and so yummy. I don't like grits, but I ordered grits two of the three days they were so good! And the country ham, don't even get me started! YUM! The waitresses were so friendly, and the food so good - we just had to return!

The other place that we tried and returned to was Flaming Amy's Burrito Barn. YUMMY! The slogan is "Hot, Fast, Cheap, and Easy" - true, and funny! They have a special on Tuesday - show them your tattoo and get 10% off, so we went back on Tuesday! :) Yummy combinations, and excellent homemade salsas - my favorite being Ginger Peach!! I highly recommend stopping if you get a chance!

We also immensely enjoyed some seafood (well, I did anyway, Mike had chicken!) and a great pizza place both visited with Mike's brother and sister-in-law, Jeff and Geeta (they live in Wilmington where Jeff is a professor). The Mellow Mushroom (I didn't get a picture!) is a fantastic little hippy joint of a pizza place. SO good!! We had the Kosmic Karma - pesto, sundried tomatoes, feta... you get the picture!

Other than food... we went to the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher. It was a very enjoyable way to spend a couple hours! I liked the jelly fish the best! So pretty and crazy.

We made the decision to go ahead and drive to Shenandoah National Park, even though we both wanted to stay by the ocean! My feet were quite sore from walking barefoot on the sand, so driving for a while wasn't a bad idea, plus - it was the PERFECT time of year to head into that area. And we were right - the trees were amazing!! I'm glad that we went ahead with our original plan. We'll definitely go back to our place at Wrightsville! It was just perfect!

I didn't like Virginia as much as North Carolina. The feel wasn't as friendly. The views were amazing though. The drive along Skyline Drive in the park was spectacular! We even saw two bears. (I saw both... Mike only saw the cub that we almost ran into with our rental car! The other one was while we were walking on a trail. It was BIG, but thankfully running away from us in a hurry! We went back to the car immediately though!!) I couldn't get a picture of either unfortunately. I took a ton of photos of the trees, but I'll only put a couple here. Go check out flickr for more! :)

Pshew! We arrived safely home last night from our trip to North Carolina (and Virginia).

All-in-all, it was a wonderful vacation! It started on a not so good note with the air travel last Saturday, and ended with another rather unpleasant flight, but the between was great!

First off - never fly AirTran airlines! It was a bit cheaper, but not worth it! After we were pushed back from the gate Saturday morning, we returned right back to the gate. After about 20 minutes of sitting (and wondering) we were told by the pilot that an "eyebrow" window was shattered and the plane wasn't air worthy... So, off the plane we go. And then we wait, and we wait, and we wait some more... for info about when we'll be leaving again... FINALLY, we are rescheduled to leave at 3:40 p.m. (our original flight was 11:40) and we finally make it to Atlanta, and then Raleigh at about midnight. It was a terribly LONG day, and boy, were we glad to arrive... (Mind you - I was glad the broken window was discovered before we took off, but the way the aftermath was handled was unpleasant to say the least!)

Finding a hotel was the next order of business... come to find out it is the NC State Fair and everything is full! Yikes!!!! We took the one over-priced room we could find and literally crashed! We decided the next day to go ahead and head for Wilmington to get away from the busy-ness of state fair! We spent much of the morning and afternoon at Duke University walking through the gardens. Wow! So amazing! I'm just in awe of the green-ness of this area! Vines, trees, ferns, moss, everywhere! Something I haven't seen a lot of living in Colorado!!

Duke was impressive to say the least. I took so many photos of the chapel. The architecture was stunning. We drove onto campus just in time to hear the bells at noon too! We left in time to make it to the coast at Wrightsville Beach just around sunset! We made a beeline for the shore! When we returned to our car, I realized we were parked right in front of a hotel I'd researched online! I hadn't made reservations because I couldn't tell what it was really like. Well - it was really amazing!! So, we rented a room - well, a suite really! For $69 a night, we rented a wonderful suite at the Sandpeddler Motel right next to the ocean!! WHOO HOO! It was about as close to perfect as it comes! We had an ocean view from our balcony and could hear the waves crashing! LOVED it!!

I've decided that waking up and hearing the ocean right out your door is just about the best thing. And then taking a walk on the beach before breakfast - even better! That's what we did every morning!

I'm going to have more to share, but that's it for tonight!! I'll be back with more and more pictures!! You can see all of our trip photos at my flickr.

Don't know when I'll be back again... OK, so I do know when I'll be back! Mike and I leave tomorrow morning for a vacation!! We are heading south to North Carolina (does that even make sense!?) to the Raleigh area and surrounding places. Including the OCEAN!! WHOO-HOO!

We'll be back in a week, and I hope I'll have lots of fun trip stories and photos to share! If I owe you a swap package - it's in the mail! No, really! I got everything mailed out that was supposed to go out (I think and HOPE!) :)

I'll leave you with my newest ATCs (which have also gone postal!) for Halloween! Have a great week and I'll catch up with you when we return!

Well, we made a rather quick (LONG) trip to southern Colorado on Monday and Tuesday. We had reservations in Durango at a Bed and Breakfast, so Monday was basically driving straight to Durango.

We ran into SO much road construction and heavy traffic. And it seems that no one wants to go the speed limit - SLOW I mean. We both got rather impatient numerous times going 15 miles or more under the limit! Yikes! We were enjoying the scenery, but we also had a destination we wanted to get to!

I have to say, the road from Ouray, CO to Durango, CO is one of the scariest I've ever been on. It is called the Million Dollar Highway because it was so expensive to build. The edge is sheer dropoffs, with NO guard rails. I love the mountains, but I have a rather severe reaction to mountain roads! Panic. Sheer, utter panic. My hands hurt very bad from holding on so tight! I don't remember it being this bad when I was younger, but it was very bad on that particular stretch of road. It is 74 miles, but takes about 2 hours because of the curvy, slow road. It is spectacular, and worth it... if you're not me! I made it through though, and I was happy we saw everything we did. ... And we drove it again the next day... I think I'm crazy. I did much better the next day as I knew more what I was getting into!

The Bed and Breakfast was a very lovely location - the accomodations were very nice. We drove directly into town after checking in and had a wonderful Italian dinner in Durango. YUM! We always seem to find the best restaurants just on chance! It was very hot (over 100 degrees) everywhere. I'm very glad that Mike's car is airconditioned!

Back at the B&B for the night - we ran into frustration and disappointment. We were facing the river, and would have been able to hear it running all night with our windows open. However, the grounds keeper decided to run not one, but two "gunshot" sprinklers ALL night long!! I kept thinking they would go off at some point, and they never did. It kept me awake. I wish I had gone hunting for the turn off, but that probably wouldn't have been smart. I commented to the manager on our way out the next day and she was quite huffy that I did. Needless to say, we won't stay at this particular place again, which is a bummer since it was so nice!

Tuesday we drove back up the crazy highway and went to Box Canyon Falls in Ouray. What an amazing sight this is!! So cold - the spray really gets you! I was terrified walking down the bridge above the river to the falls. I conquered that fear and I'm glad I did! I never thought I was such a horrible chicken! (this is a movie I took with my digital camera - sound quality isn't great - but you can see the water action!)



After seeing the falls, we headed for Montrose and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Whoa!! This is truly an amazing park! We drove all along the south rim and stopped at many of the walk out points. The views are stunning. The canyon is about 2700 feet deep, so it was very "dizzy-fying" but just so amazingly beautiful!! We took much longer than we thought we would to drive through - time well spent.

We also drove down to the bottom of the canyon - on a road marked 16% grade - sheesh! It was a bit nerve-wracking as the car kept trying to speed up - even in first gear! Again - worth the shot nerves! So amazingly beautiful!

I have SO many pictures. Here is a collage of some of the high points. If you want to see them all you can check out my flickr! It was a quick, long drive, but we had a great time! I'm sunburned, and was glad for the day off yesterday! We didn't do anything to "celebrate" but just lounged around home!

Whoo hoo!! Mike and I are taking a few days off! Lazing at home for a couple and then we're going to Durango for a couple. It is quite a few hours south of us, but the drive is the point - it's beautiful!!

We're staying HERE when we arrive. So pretty! :) I can't wait - I'll be back next week and hopefully have lots of photos and stories to share. Happy 4th everyone. See you when we get back!