Portland Trip: Silver Falls

This is the first in a series of posts about our recent Oregon trip. For an overview of the whole trip, read Home from Oregon.

We arrived in Portland on Friday night, spent Saturday doing random stuff. Sunday we went to church and Jennifer found out that a lot of her friends from high school were married and moved back into Jennifer's parents' ward. So she got to say hi and catch up with some of them. We then went to the Jenson's in Oregon City where I thought I'd taken some pictures but apparently not. Tyler fell asleep on the way there and slept the whole time we were there so he didn't get to play with Sophie. While we were there for Elanor's blessing we set up to accompany the Jenson family to Silver Falls for a few hours on Monday since the Jensons were flying back to DC on Tuesday afternoon. We did get to see them briefly in Utah (they did a three leg trip... DC to Utah, Utah to Portland and then Portland back to DC) but thought it would be fun to spend some time with them in Oregon as well since they were pretty busy in Utah.

Monday morning we got in the car with Kelsey and Grandpa Conder and took the hour long drive to the falls which are just outside of Silverton. We went to the south fall since it, I was told, is the most spectacular. Although it was not at it's peak in mid-August, it was still a pretty cool water fall. The neat thing about the south falls (where we went) is that there is a path down to where you can go behind the falls.



We went down to see the falls, took the little path behind the falls and then hiked back up (it's like a quarter mile round trip) and had a picnic lunch generously provided by the Jensons. I was very proud of Tyler for doing most of the hike down to the falls himself. The photo above was taken about halfway down the trail and we went over to where you can see the people behind the falls from there. He made it all the way down and over half the way back up. It was fairly steep and it was a little too much for Tyler so I got to carry him the rest of the way, which was almost a little too much for me :)



The rest of the Jenson clan went on a multi-hour hike while Andrew, Michelle, Sophie and Elanor stayed behind with us (with Kelsey and Grandpa Conder) and went to the playground there at the park. We stayed a little bit longer than we had originally planned, but Tyler had a good time and got sufficiently worn out that he was asleep promptly once we were back in the car. This was the first of many days that wore out Tyler which I think he enjoyed (and we enjoyed too since he kinda went nutty with the car trip and then the weekend of not much excitement).

We then went to visit Grandma Conder's work where she proudly showed off Tyler and Alex to all her co-workers (oh, and she did mention Jennifer and I to most of the people :) ).

Jennifer and I then went to McCormick and Schmick's at the Bridgeport Mall for dinner with Andrew and Michelle. Jennifer and I ate there the last time we were in Portland and really enjoyed it and so suggested it for our night out. The cool thing about it is that there isn't a set menu. The menu changes based on what seafood is available and as they say on there website "Some menus change once a year, ours changes twice daily."

The food was excellent. I got Cedar Plank Salmon and Jennifer got Shrimp and Crab Stuffed Salmon. Michelle got some dish that I can't remember what it was, but it was awesome and Andrew got a Salad with Salmon on it. We also got some seared ahi tuna as an appetizer which was quite good as well. Delicious all around. Mine came with an intriguing Berry Sauce for the salmon which was almost like a berry butter and with it's sweetness nicely complemented the salmon. It was quite tasty but I'm still not quite sure how they made it.

We ended with a slice of Key Lime pie and the Jensons had the "trio" which consisted of three small bowls containing a chocolate mousse-like dessert, berry cobbler and creme brulee. The creme brulee naturally steered the conversation towards blow torches in the kitchen which neither of us have, but agreed it would be way cool to have one, especially a commercial grade one that is frequently used on Iron Chef America. The desserts were delicious and topped us all off. Jennifer and I had talked about picking up the check but Andrew beat me to it (I hesitated). His argument was that he was the only one at the table that was currently employed which was hard to argue with (our vacation to Oregon was unpaid since I was literally between jobs). So thanks to Andrew and Michelle for the meal and the fun evening and we'll pick up the next one when we get together again.

So that was the first few days of our trip. I'll continue with the rest of the trip soon...

Portland - August 2007