A Small Time Out
We had fun in Beaverton and in wandering down I-5 to see what Oregon could offer us.
We went to Thai food at Pho Van, and I ate a lot of chicken and shrimp wrapped around sugar cane and roasted with lots of fresh vegetables and peanut sauce all in those rice wrappers. Jet had pho and ate a ton of the noodles wrapped up in the rice wraps. He really enjoyed that a lot. Marina and her family were along for the ride and we all stayed at Walt and Cathie's and the kids slept together in the living room. Jet was mildly congested from the cat, but it wasn't too bad for him. I needed to escape to the cat-free room before I could get the asthma calmed down, but it happened, and I was much happier for that.
Marina had along a copy of the first Harry Potter movie, and they watched the first half of it before going to bed. Jet ended up spending most of the time while he was getting ready for bed asking about what happens next. Parents said that they could watch the rest in the morning.
But, of course, the kids had completely forgotten about it in the morning. :-)
Breakfast, and then we packed up and headed out to some of the U-Pick berry farms out by Beaverton. There were at least a dozen of them out there, but Marina's family had a very specific farm they wanted to go to. There were Coho raspberries as big as my thumb, all ripe and ready to go. We picked nearly a quart for our own eating. Then we helped pick blueberries, tiny ones that were deep, deep blue, and we got a good half a gallon all together. Everyone pooled the blueberries and they went with Marina to Ashland as they were headed home.
We went back to Beaverton to get gas at the Safeway, as we had a ten cent discount due to all the food purchases we made at Safeway out in Oceanside. We also stopped back at the mall that had Pho Van, as they not only had a Trader Joe's but a Moonstruck Chocolates as well. The only thing I'd forgotten to get at Trader Joe's was some chocolate tea, but when faced with the plethora of choices at Moonstruck, Jet got one of the ice cream cone truffles, with peanut butter cream, and I got one Marionberry and one extra bittersweet truffle. I limited myself to one can of the bittersweet, organic hot chocolate (not just cocoa), and I was good.
We got on I-5 at this point and headed South. Jet and I napped a bit, but John woke us up when we got to Mount Angel.
Back when we lived in Redmond, we used to go to Porter's Automotive, also known a Dixie's BBQ. Sadly, they've closed up shop and I'm not exactly sure why. Still, when we used to go there, they served Mt. Angel Root Beer from old-fashioned bottle pop dispensers that kept the bottles good and cold. I would buy a case of the root beer each time we went and sometimes I flew it home, drove it home, or just drank it while we lived in the area. So I was curious to see if I could buy the root beer while we were where it had come from.
When we drove into town the biggest building said, "Mt. Angel Brewery". It was a beautiful, Bavarian style building, with the gingerbread eaves and all that. But the huge building was dark. Being Monday, I halfway expected it, but on closer look, the Closed sign didn't have any times that looked like they'd be open. We stopped at a gas station/convenience store with fried chicken, tenders, fries, Jo Jos, and other things all smelling really good, but looking very 7-11. There were no Mt. Angel root beers or beers in the coolers, so we stayed out of it, and John talked with someone in the store. The guy in the store pointed us out and back and around a particular other gas station and said that there was a sausage maker there, who made their sausages by hand and served them for lunch. You could also buy a rope or two of sausages to take home.
He didn't tell John a name, but we went the way he said and we came across the Mount Angel Sausage Company. When we walked in the door we were happily assaulted with the scent of caramelizing onions being grilled with plenty of sauerkraut as well. Jet said, "That smells *good*."
I got the bratwurst, John got the spicy chicken sausage, and Jet got the foot-long hot dog. They were all very, very tasty, and the potato salad was nice and zesty and creamy as well. I burnt my mouth on the very hot sausage, but it tasted so good with the nutty sweetness of the grilled onions and cabbage and the sweetness of a very soft, fresh roll that I just kept eating. Jet ate nearly the whole foot of hot dog, leaving just a few inches for us to taste. :-) He really liked his normal potato chips as well, instead of the potato salad.
So we had a great lunch and finished it off with the Ben and Jerry's ice cream treats in the freezer.
We took the small two-lane highways further south for a bit. Then the big lunch caught up with me and both Jet and I were asleep most of the way to rephetibel's house. She had invited us over to visit with her, and she was having family over. We missed ross_teneyck, which both John and I knew from way back as he stayed with us a good long time when he needed a place to stay. It's always good to hear from him and how he's doing now. But his sister, linda_marus, was there with her husband, John, and son, Rick, as well, and Jet always loves a little kid time. So we went to visit.
We had a great time there. All three of us ladies all knit, so it was fun to see all the projects in progress and some done on rephetibel's part. I loved a very nice, thick, dense cardigan with inset pockets that had a very nice purl stitch pattern on the edge. It was a lot of good work, and a lovely shade of red as well. It was fun to hear her giggle at my Phoenix sweater because she knew just how much work was going to go into it. *laughter*
rephetibel was great and took us out on a tour of her house and property and we got to see a lot of how things grow in Oregon. There's so much water and the soil is so nice. It is pretty amazing to me to see all the different kinds of herbs, fruit and vegetables and everything... The roses are amazing out there.
Jet liked playing with Rick, and vice versa, too, I think. They built things and destroyed them happily, they ran around us while we looked in the garden. They had a great time watching a little Thomas before dinner, and then playing with balsa gliders after dinner. Jet said that he had a lot of fun, so that was very cool. rephetibel also invited us for dinner and she did a fabulous job on a fork-tender pork roast with a beautiful onion and potato pie that folks just inhaled along with salad and bread and peas. Jet took everyone aback a bit by asking, "Isn't there anything I can eat?" I let him try and figure out what he could eat on the table and that he might want to try a few things other than just bread and butter, but in the end both Rick and Jet ended up with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before the raspberries came out. Rick dug into the raspberries quite happily, and Jet ate his as well with cream.
It was a very, very nice visit, and I got a bunch of alpaca as well from it all. That was very nice!
From there we hit I-5 and got to Roseburg before finding a Super 8 where we pretty much just passed out.
We got up late this morning, and went swimming as the only reason Jet went to sleep was because we promised him swimming, but we were so late to bed and so late up that we didn't get the free breakfast. We really wanted to find a local diner, but we happened on an IHOP only after going through most of the town, so we stopped there as once Jet saw the IHOP we weren't going anywhere else.
We managed a pretty huge breakfast there, which was good as from there we headed south to Ashland.
We arrived around 2 or so, and John, Paul, Marina and Jet took their bikes to the reservoir. I had some quiet time with the camera and computer so I downloaded all the shots I'd taken so far, and did a little surfing and writing. But it was only an hour or so. Then I went to pick them up from down at the bottom of the hill, and drove the kids and John back up. John and Paul left for a Hash ("drinkers with a running problem") nearly immediately after, and Jan was great and made dinner for us and her family who were all visiting, including her father, brother, sister, and sister's daughter. We had good conversations and then folks went off to a play (this being the city of the on-going Shakespeare festival plus a bunch of other thespian events). Jan, Jet, Marina and I finished the rest of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (what IS wrong with the traditional Philosopher's Stone anyway???) and the kids actually went down at a normal bed time and passed out on sleeping bags in the office.
Now I have just a bit of time to write and rummage amongst the photos for more to upload...
One great good thing is that with enough sleep my teeth and jaw are finally calming down even without painkillers. So I'm far more content than I have been.
We went to Thai food at Pho Van, and I ate a lot of chicken and shrimp wrapped around sugar cane and roasted with lots of fresh vegetables and peanut sauce all in those rice wrappers. Jet had pho and ate a ton of the noodles wrapped up in the rice wraps. He really enjoyed that a lot. Marina and her family were along for the ride and we all stayed at Walt and Cathie's and the kids slept together in the living room. Jet was mildly congested from the cat, but it wasn't too bad for him. I needed to escape to the cat-free room before I could get the asthma calmed down, but it happened, and I was much happier for that.
Marina had along a copy of the first Harry Potter movie, and they watched the first half of it before going to bed. Jet ended up spending most of the time while he was getting ready for bed asking about what happens next. Parents said that they could watch the rest in the morning.
But, of course, the kids had completely forgotten about it in the morning. :-)
Breakfast, and then we packed up and headed out to some of the U-Pick berry farms out by Beaverton. There were at least a dozen of them out there, but Marina's family had a very specific farm they wanted to go to. There were Coho raspberries as big as my thumb, all ripe and ready to go. We picked nearly a quart for our own eating. Then we helped pick blueberries, tiny ones that were deep, deep blue, and we got a good half a gallon all together. Everyone pooled the blueberries and they went with Marina to Ashland as they were headed home.
We went back to Beaverton to get gas at the Safeway, as we had a ten cent discount due to all the food purchases we made at Safeway out in Oceanside. We also stopped back at the mall that had Pho Van, as they not only had a Trader Joe's but a Moonstruck Chocolates as well. The only thing I'd forgotten to get at Trader Joe's was some chocolate tea, but when faced with the plethora of choices at Moonstruck, Jet got one of the ice cream cone truffles, with peanut butter cream, and I got one Marionberry and one extra bittersweet truffle. I limited myself to one can of the bittersweet, organic hot chocolate (not just cocoa), and I was good.
We got on I-5 at this point and headed South. Jet and I napped a bit, but John woke us up when we got to Mount Angel.
Back when we lived in Redmond, we used to go to Porter's Automotive, also known a Dixie's BBQ. Sadly, they've closed up shop and I'm not exactly sure why. Still, when we used to go there, they served Mt. Angel Root Beer from old-fashioned bottle pop dispensers that kept the bottles good and cold. I would buy a case of the root beer each time we went and sometimes I flew it home, drove it home, or just drank it while we lived in the area. So I was curious to see if I could buy the root beer while we were where it had come from.
When we drove into town the biggest building said, "Mt. Angel Brewery". It was a beautiful, Bavarian style building, with the gingerbread eaves and all that. But the huge building was dark. Being Monday, I halfway expected it, but on closer look, the Closed sign didn't have any times that looked like they'd be open. We stopped at a gas station/convenience store with fried chicken, tenders, fries, Jo Jos, and other things all smelling really good, but looking very 7-11. There were no Mt. Angel root beers or beers in the coolers, so we stayed out of it, and John talked with someone in the store. The guy in the store pointed us out and back and around a particular other gas station and said that there was a sausage maker there, who made their sausages by hand and served them for lunch. You could also buy a rope or two of sausages to take home.
He didn't tell John a name, but we went the way he said and we came across the Mount Angel Sausage Company. When we walked in the door we were happily assaulted with the scent of caramelizing onions being grilled with plenty of sauerkraut as well. Jet said, "That smells *good*."
I got the bratwurst, John got the spicy chicken sausage, and Jet got the foot-long hot dog. They were all very, very tasty, and the potato salad was nice and zesty and creamy as well. I burnt my mouth on the very hot sausage, but it tasted so good with the nutty sweetness of the grilled onions and cabbage and the sweetness of a very soft, fresh roll that I just kept eating. Jet ate nearly the whole foot of hot dog, leaving just a few inches for us to taste. :-) He really liked his normal potato chips as well, instead of the potato salad.
So we had a great lunch and finished it off with the Ben and Jerry's ice cream treats in the freezer.
We took the small two-lane highways further south for a bit. Then the big lunch caught up with me and both Jet and I were asleep most of the way to rephetibel's house. She had invited us over to visit with her, and she was having family over. We missed ross_teneyck, which both John and I knew from way back as he stayed with us a good long time when he needed a place to stay. It's always good to hear from him and how he's doing now. But his sister, linda_marus, was there with her husband, John, and son, Rick, as well, and Jet always loves a little kid time. So we went to visit.
We had a great time there. All three of us ladies all knit, so it was fun to see all the projects in progress and some done on rephetibel's part. I loved a very nice, thick, dense cardigan with inset pockets that had a very nice purl stitch pattern on the edge. It was a lot of good work, and a lovely shade of red as well. It was fun to hear her giggle at my Phoenix sweater because she knew just how much work was going to go into it. *laughter*
rephetibel was great and took us out on a tour of her house and property and we got to see a lot of how things grow in Oregon. There's so much water and the soil is so nice. It is pretty amazing to me to see all the different kinds of herbs, fruit and vegetables and everything... The roses are amazing out there.
Jet liked playing with Rick, and vice versa, too, I think. They built things and destroyed them happily, they ran around us while we looked in the garden. They had a great time watching a little Thomas before dinner, and then playing with balsa gliders after dinner. Jet said that he had a lot of fun, so that was very cool. rephetibel also invited us for dinner and she did a fabulous job on a fork-tender pork roast with a beautiful onion and potato pie that folks just inhaled along with salad and bread and peas. Jet took everyone aback a bit by asking, "Isn't there anything I can eat?" I let him try and figure out what he could eat on the table and that he might want to try a few things other than just bread and butter, but in the end both Rick and Jet ended up with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before the raspberries came out. Rick dug into the raspberries quite happily, and Jet ate his as well with cream.
It was a very, very nice visit, and I got a bunch of alpaca as well from it all. That was very nice!
From there we hit I-5 and got to Roseburg before finding a Super 8 where we pretty much just passed out.
We got up late this morning, and went swimming as the only reason Jet went to sleep was because we promised him swimming, but we were so late to bed and so late up that we didn't get the free breakfast. We really wanted to find a local diner, but we happened on an IHOP only after going through most of the town, so we stopped there as once Jet saw the IHOP we weren't going anywhere else.
We managed a pretty huge breakfast there, which was good as from there we headed south to Ashland.
We arrived around 2 or so, and John, Paul, Marina and Jet took their bikes to the reservoir. I had some quiet time with the camera and computer so I downloaded all the shots I'd taken so far, and did a little surfing and writing. But it was only an hour or so. Then I went to pick them up from down at the bottom of the hill, and drove the kids and John back up. John and Paul left for a Hash ("drinkers with a running problem") nearly immediately after, and Jan was great and made dinner for us and her family who were all visiting, including her father, brother, sister, and sister's daughter. We had good conversations and then folks went off to a play (this being the city of the on-going Shakespeare festival plus a bunch of other thespian events). Jan, Jet, Marina and I finished the rest of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (what IS wrong with the traditional Philosopher's Stone anyway???) and the kids actually went down at a normal bed time and passed out on sleeping bags in the office.
Now I have just a bit of time to write and rummage amongst the photos for more to upload...
One great good thing is that with enough sleep my teeth and jaw are finally calming down even without painkillers. So I'm far more content than I have been.