West Coast trip - Weekend on the Gorge

Still catching up from November!

Our second weekend on the West Coast, Mama and Caden headed up to the Columbia River Gorge to visit the Blairs and Tanja. On the way, we stopped at the Bonneville Dam and nearby fish hatchery. Even though it wasn't the right season, we still saw a big salmon swim by through the fish ladder, and Caden was impressed by the huge sturgeon at the fish hatchery.

In The Dalles, Caden had a blast playing with Conor and Sofia! Sofia is even old enough to read to the boys now, and Conor seemed to like having Caden around, too ('hey, I like you, what's your name again?').
Friday, we took a day trip to Tri-Cities to visit Tanja, who was back from Africa to have her baby (little Leah, born exactly 2 weeks later!). We spent a beautiful, sunny day together, especially enjoying the huge play structure and remote control airplanes and helicopters (!) at a park along the Columbia River.

Before we left on Saturday, between 2 early morning service calls, Mike was nice enough to give the kids a treat: a tour of some awesome machines at the CAT dealership where he works! Mike demostrated the workings of - and Caden got to sit inside - a humungous bulldozer...

an excavator digger...

a loader...

and a roller, which really made the ground shake!


On the way back to Corvallis, we stopped by Multnomah Falls. Caden was very impressed by the waterfall, and he insisted on hiking up to the upper bridge. Mama agreed, as long as he walked the whole way himself, and he did a great job hiking up and down. The waterfall and remote-control helicopter were the most exciting and talked about parts of the trip!

Our first mother-son Mama-Caden trip was so much fun!

Stay tuned for another update tomorrow!