Night Swimming

 

Camp Time!

Off to the digital music and GPS geo-caching camps at Chabot Space Center in Oakland.

Listen!

Julie's Song:


Nate's Song:

SF Exploratorium

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the top of my list of things to do this summer was to visit the new Exploratorium on Pier 15. Although you couldn't beat the old location at the Palace of Fine Arts, this new location is huge, well laid out, and all the "touch" displays are new. In fact, everything you do here requires touching or playing, which sat perfectly well with Nate and Julie. We discovered late in the day that we could eat & order all our food at the sushi counter, a floating glass top that contained warm water and small rocks of dry ice. Sometimes it was hard to tell if it was a science center or art museum. Either way, we became annual members so we can visit again soon.

Recycle Lafayette

It came down to the wire: I launched Recycle Lafayette -- just 30 minutes before I was to speak at the Lafayette Library. The site helps support Lafayette's efforts to achieve a 75% waste diversion (recycling) rate in the next couple of years, and supports the team of college interns we have working with our local businesses. 

Last Night in Trinidad

 

 

 

 

 

 

We woke up in Grants Pass with no desire to head straight home, so we found an opening at a bed and breakfast in Trinidad (huge room! ocean view! deck! two extra cots!) But before we got there, we appeased the kids by stopping at a used Lego shop, and then the kids appeased me by hiking a trail in the Jedediah Smith Redwood Park, the location where they filmed the ewoks and tree chase sequences in Return of the Jedi. We ended the night, and our vacation, with a dinner of mashed potato waffle cones (seriously) and a bottle of champagne and world-class sunset over Turtle Rocks.  

Tillamook and Yachats

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the final stretch of our vacation…and we didn't want to rush home. So we reserved a cabin at the Weasku Inn at Grants Pass making as many stops as possible along the way: Tillamook Cheese for ice cream and tater tots, Munson Falls (largest waterfall on the Oregon Coast), covered bridges, and a couple of beach stops for last-ditch agate hunting (a complete bust). It's embarassing to admit, but we did aim for Yachats and mid-Oregon coast due to the agates we heard on the beaches there, but the small fragments we found were infrequent, unpolished and uninteresting. On the postitive side, we discovered Highway 38 that followed the Umpqua River. Gorgeous.

More Cannon Beach

 

 

 

 

 

Portland to Cannon Beach

 

 

 

 

 

 

What started as a quick stop to visit the Rose Garden in Portland's Washington Park turned into a train ride, and given the free zoo admission that day, a round-trip tour through the great Portland Zoo, including front-row seats at the flying birds show. No wonder Nate looks passed out by the time we reached Cannon Beach later that afternoon.

Columbia Gorge - Oneonta & Pony Tail Falls

 

 

 

 

 

This was hands-down my favorite part of our Portland vacation. We took a day trip out to the Columbia River looking for the Oneonta Gorge which we had read so much about. It's less a trail and more like a river walk -- until you get to the 20' high jumble of logs wedged between the two tall walls of the slot canyon. We scampered over and then came to viewing distance of the middle waterfall, stopped only by a section of 5' deep water….COLD water. We had more energy (most of us did, anyways), so we took a longer hiking excusion above the slot canyon, across some neat bridges, and along the trail that went behind the waterfall. It's probably like Hawaii -- pictures don't do it justice. Here's a video Gina took.