Oregon!

Friday July 22nd - 


Despite the rain the night before, we awoke to a clear sky on the Oregon coast!  We made our way down some short trails to the beach in order to enjoy the view.  One of the trails took us down to some mussel covered tide pools and we spent a while watching the crashing waves and poking at the starfish and anemones.   We then drove up what was supposedly the highest paved road along the Oregon coast and took another short trail to an incredible view of the coastline!  Apparently, on a day as clear as we had, you could see over 30 miles of ocean in every direction.  What a treat to have such clear skies!

Tons of Starfish!

Our next stop was Salem, Oregon for the weekend to visit Craig and Megan Hammond, my youth leaders from junior high and high school, as well as their 3 young kids Kyler (7), Madelyn (4) and Nora (2) and #4 on the way!  Dad and Beth headed on to a B&B for the night while the Hammonds, Brian, Nate, and I went to Kyler's day camp party to celebrate the end of the week.  We enjoyed reminiscing about day camp ourselves, hearing the song "Going on a Squeegee Hunt", and having a big pot luck dinner.  We then stayed up much too late chatting with Craig and Megan and catching up on the last two years.  It's great to know such solid people who are a just a little bit farther along in life.  They're such excellent Godly examples as well as sources of knowledge and insight; we consider ourselves lucky to have them in our life.

Saturday July 23rd - 


Megan made us a wonderful breakfast Saturday morning before Craig took us to Willamette University for a tour.  Craig works with Willamette through Campus Ambassadors.  We're sure that their guiding so many college students through their walks with Christ as they once did with me and my friends from high school back in Oak Park, IL.  We walked around Willamette and heard all about the different dorms, where the students hang and where Craig likes to strategically be sitting in order to talk to the students in between classes.

Spisiak's and Hammond's!

For the afternoon, the Schroeders (and Spisiaks) took a day trip to Portland, OR, where we took a whirlwind 5 hour tour.  We meandered through the International Rose Garden and stopped just long enough to marvel at the crazy rose varieties they have.  We also stepped in to the massive Powell's Book Shop, where Dad said "meet you back here in 1/2 an hour" and we proceeded to wander around the block and a half, 4 story book store.  If I lived in Portland, I would probably spend quite a bit of time at Powell's because they have tons of copies of used books mixed in with the new copies, little post-it's of recommended books along the shelves and and lots of unique books that you would normally have to scour the web to find.  We barely scratched the surface, and didn't even enter half of the rooms, let alone look at what was on the shelves.  After our half an hour of wandering, we returned to the maze known as 'the streets of Portland', where we attempted to navigate the myriad of one-ways and dead-ends to finally drop Brian off at his friend Matt Cecil's apartment for the night.  Matt used to live 4 doors down from us growing up, before he moved about 4 blocks further away.  Brian and Matt have thus been friends since before kindergarten and enjoyed catching up for the evening. With dinner time quickly approaching, the rest of us made our way further downtown and stopped at the delicious McCormick & Schmick's for some delicious seafood and steak along the river.

After dinner we headed back to Salem and to the Hammonds for some more late night conversation, and a little bit of sleep as well.

They had a ton of these crazy multicolor roses.