Seattle!

Ah, the metropolis capital of the pacific northwest! Home of Starbucks! Setting of a fantastic romantic comedy! A city with a gigantic tower structure! Home of the Seattle Sounders... ah, well, forget that last one. Our romp through the emerald city was a glorious, relentless, and otherwise twisted journey into Portland's big sis. There is only one way to describe the ramble... CARROTS AND STICKS!

Carrots to Seattle (and Washington) for:

70 mph
Excellent Skyline
HOV lanes
A vegan hot dog cafe
Pike Place Market (fish and produce)
Public Transportation
Snow-capped mountain views
Puget Sound
H&M
Jimmy Johns!
An octopus bike rack
Skate Boarders
A general love of boating
Starbucks!
Clean streets
Fresh flowers
$5 Ninja Assassinations!
Friendliness
Duck Rides!
Deschutes Beer! (Can't beat Oregon beer)
Pike's Brewing Co.
Electric Buses
Kerry Park and its night shots
A wall decorated with gum
Huge San Fransiscoesque hills

Sticks to Seattle for:
General hatred of the homeless/vagabonds
Lack of on-ramps for I-5 South
Poor vegan menus (besides hot dogs)
Sales tax!
Live lobsters slowly dying on ice
Having a weak bike scene
Being a concrete jungle
Complete lack of decent greenage/parks
Short prom dresses
Lack of recycling
Mostly uncreative homeless signs

***********************************************************************

And here are some pictures. More on Tammy's facebook:

Kelly Park

Best Farmer's Market ever!

Where all the fun fish throwing takes place!

The very fist Starbucks Store:

The gum wall. Very disgusting. Kind of artsy.

Beautiful Puget Sound

Keep Portland Weird

Because there are so many quirky qualities to Portland we have decided to attempt a weekly, biweekly or monthly "Keep Portland Weird" post dedicated to some uniqueness in the city.

First up: Vegan Corn Dogs at the local dive bar.
You can't even buy vegan cheese in Grand Rapids, let alone have a vegan snack to go with your beer. For those of you who don't know, Justin has been a vegan for over a year now. Vegans don't eat any animal products (no meat, no eggs, no dairy). It is so nice to be surrounded by fellow animal lovers. And it's also nice to have PBR on tap wherever you go... that is if you forgo the 40 local breweries.

Clatsop Trail

We went on our first backpacking trip of the year last weekend. The Clatsop Loop Trail is a part of the Oregon Coast Trail, located in Ecola State Park. We parked at Indian Beach and hiked uphill into the forest about 1 1/4 miles where there is hikers camp. Let's be specific... the hike is actually a climb. Entire 1.25 miles is uphill, or climbing the hill is the entire hike. However, considering this was only 800 feet of elevation, we have our work cut out for us if we want to climb an actual mountain anytime soon.

Once we were at camp we immediately tried to start a fire... and we succeeded 90 minutes later. The temperature plummeted during the night and we woke up to three random hikers wandering into camp, dogs barking (Bam mostly), and owls making all sorts of noise. In the morning we hiked a tad farther to the coast and had excellent views of the lighthouse off of Canon Beach. There were also WWII bunkers along the way... very interesting and kind of creepy because they were locked up to keep rift raft out. Oh yeah, and Justin found black bear scat (poop)!

Twilight fans recognize this scene? Sadly, I do....
"La Push Baby. It's... La Push."

The Boys

The Girls

Nice Views

There are 3 cabins at the hikers camp.
We had a hard time deciding if they were cool or creepy.

Boys making shelters:

Justin spotted this 5 inch friend.

Making a fire in Oregon is not an easy task.
The entire forest was saturated.

What's backpacking without wine?

Aiden was ready for some vegan marshmellows.

"Terrible Tilly" = Tillamook Lighthouse

WWII Bunkers

Everywhere we go
people wanna know
who we are
so we tell em:
We are the Timbers...
The mighty, mighty TIMBERS!

We went to our first Portland Timbers game last night and it was fantastic! We had a blast with the Bonjernoors at Opening Day of Rose City Soccer. I am pretty sure we are buying season tickets. And I am pretty sure we are all going to be enlisting in the army... The Timbers' Army!

It was such a nice night!

The army.

Celebrating

Timber Joey saws off a slab of the log after each goal.


So much fun!

Spring Break

Tammy's parents (Shari and Randy + Ginger) came out to visit with us on our spring break this year. I am pretty sure we did more in that week than the previous six months combined. It is exhausting just trying to think about it. There is a common thread amongst our itinerary... pretty obvious if you know the Wegeners. Here is a summary of the events:

Saturday, March 20:

We took a walk on the Esplanade, which is a multi-use pathway located along the Willamette River. Tammy and Randy took pictures. We went to VooDoo Doughnuts (big surprise). Randy took pictures. We went to the Saturday Market. We went to St. John's Bridge and took more pictures. We even went back to the Esplanade for night shots of the city.

Sunday, March 21:

Sunday we drove through the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Loop and took pictures of many different waterfalls. It was raining pretty hard in the gorge so we didn't linger. I would bet that we were at Multnomah Falls for a total of 6 minutes, Randy took one picture and that was it. We ate at a Shari's Restaurant (no relation and no discount either - sorry Shari). We went to Laurelhurst Park and Mt. Tabor Park to take pictures of ducks. We even went to Overlook Park for night shots of the city and the Steel Bridge.


Monday, March 22:
The Coast

On Monday we stayed at the condo (a friend's) in Neskowin, OR, on the Oregon Coast. The dogs loved (as usual) playing at Proposal Rock Beach. We visited Pacific City, Oreon and took pictures of the rocks in the water. Probably the best part of the coast was the tide pools in an undisclosed location...
We took sunset pictures at Cape Kiwanda.


Tuesday, March 23:
More coast

We were still at Proposal Rock Inn and started to head north along the coast. We stopped at Cape Lookout in search of whales, but we found seals instead. We stopped at Oceanside beach to take more pictures of rocks in the water. Other locations included Manzanilla, Rockaway Beach, Cannon Beach (kind of disappointing), and Ecola State Park (amazing). I found a great beach for surfing and also close to a nice backpacking spot... check may's blog? On the way out we stopped at La Mexicana in Tillamook (El Tapatio? - "I'm not sure") for some speedy mexican food (and a Negro Modelo).




Wednesday, March 24:

Back to St. John's Bridge for morning shots. We had brunch at Bob's Red Mill. We went to Washington Park to visit the Japanese Gardens and then hit Pittock Mansion (with views of four major mountains).

Thursday, March 25:

VooDoo Doughnuts again? Ok, I just picked some up and brought them home. We took the MAX to the Oregon Zoo (w/ the Bonjernoors!). Many pictures were taken here. Pretty amazing zoo overall, highlights were the bat cave, hippos, and the simulated rain storms (like those are really necessary...). We stopped at Rock Bottom Brewery on the way home... good, not great. Apparently my notes say that we also took a side trip to Pioneer Place Mall and stopped at Made in Oregon, honestly I can barely remember that. We finished the night with a trip to Laurelhurst Theater and saw Sherlock Holmes (a Guy Ritchie film) with beer and popcorn.


Friday, March 26:
Downtown PDX

We visited Powell's Books and rode the Portland Street Car to the lunch carts. We took the dogs to the Mt. Tabor Dog Park. I don't remember if Rosco bit anyone this time... the smart money would say yes.