Oregon Trip Day 1

There was a day zero, Mollie and I are both computer scientists after all.  But it was less eventful.  Mollie and the youngest three drove to The Dalles to pick Harrison and me up at the Discovery Science Center.  It was the end of Harrison's school trip (2 day campout). We drove into Portland and got to our hotel.  I went out to get our dinner (at Elmers, which you don't need to revisit) and then we pretty much hunkered down for the night. Harrison had been up late for a few nights on the campout, and the other kids needed rest too.  Harrison was taking a test early in the morning, and so he got a room to himself.  Olivia ended up coughing most of the night, (apparently, she had a light case of pneumonia, but we'll get to that later...), so it was a rough night of sleep for all of us, except Harrison.

So Day 1. We started the day with a wonderful full breakfast at the hotel.  I think one of the things that helps to narrow our hotel search is whether they offer a free breakfast or not.  We only stay at those that do.  This had a pretty great breakfast bar with eggs, sausage, hash browns, fresh waffles, cereal, bagels, muffins, fresh fruit and yogurt. The kids went down in shifts, and some of them went multiple times.  When you wake up at 6:30, you might as well use all of the morning.  At about 8:30 we headed out  for our day.  Harrison and I went to his testing center while Mollie took the rest of the kids to Grant Park, home of several Beverly Cleary statues. She said that the sculpture garden was unexpectedly small, but did have a few statues of favorite Beverly Cleary characters.

The park had a great playground area.  Olivia and Noah loved the teeter/totter, and there were great swings on 15 foot chains.

After we all met up again, we set out to the zoo.  Arriving at the zoo around 10, we found a very full parking lot ... and several school buses.  We wandered through the parking for a few minutes and didn't see any open spaces, but it was a very small parking lot. When we finally found a attendant, we asked where the overflow parking area was.  He said "sorry that's all we got."  Feeling a bit confused and definitely disappointed, we followed signs to the rose garden, another destination in our plans for later that day.  We had planned to take the train from inside the zoo out the rose garden at the end of the day. The Rose Garden is massive; rows and terraces filled with beautiful roses.  We found a shady spot next to a fountain and sat down for lunch while we figured out what to do next.  A woman and her in-laws passed by and started watching the kids play.  While chatting the topic of the zoo came up, and we asked if she knew if you could take the train from the rose garden into the zoo.  She was pretty sure you could but also mentioned that she was a zoo member, and could get us free passes. She headed up to the train to pick up our tickets and in a few minutes she came back with zoo passes for the entire family.  We only had to pay for the train tickets, which we were planning on riding anyway. What an amazing run-in and turn around to our day. We lazily finished up our lunch in the roses, and Olivia made quick friends with one of the rose volunteers who
was dead-heading the roses.

She carried her bucket for her while she told her all about not finding a parking spot for the zoo.

Levi loved playing in one of the fountains.

 I had Harrison hold on to his ankles so he wouldn't fall in head first.

  After a few pictures, we set out to the zoo.

The train was lots of fun.  Levi and kids loved the ride through some really beautiful woods.

Since the zoo tickets were free, we splurged on ice cream cones from a vending machine while we waited for the train.  That's what's dripping from Olivia's chin...

On the ride, the kids looked at the map and settled on the 'must see' list animals.  Harrison wanted the big cats and Noah wanted the elephants.  Olivia wanted the horses, which we substituted with gazelles. Mollie wanted to see the polar bears and I wanted to see monkeys. Luckily the Portland zoo had all of those.

Harrison in front of the tigers.  Making his best frightened face. 

So glad we had the baby backpack.  Allowed Levi to get a good view at the zoo.

We had great views of a lot of the animals.

We almost missed this little viewing window, but I'm so glad we didn't.  I've never been so close to a big cat before!  It was pretty amazing.

Checking out the elephants.

Got really close up to the polar bear as well. He was hanging out in the shade.

We walked through a single loop and found everything.  It was a pretty warm day for Oregon, and Olivia continued to cough all day long. After the zoo, we rode the train back to our car and set out to get our dinner.  We planned to hit up a pizza place near the rose garden.  I called ahead to order the pizza and got a very generic answering machine, which made us feel less than confident.  When we drove there, it was boarded up (recently, since I had downloaded the menu just days prior...)  Confused and hungry we drove to the hotel.  And hit a good bit of Portland traffic on the way.  It was good, though, as it gave the kids a chance to sleep in the car.  We had noticed that there was a Red Robin in the shopping area near the hotel, so that became our dinner.  We also found an urgent care facility near the hotel.  The urgent care had a great website where we could fill out the paperwork online and set up an appointment time. It was  a quick visit where they concluded it might be pneumonia, prescribed antibiotics (which they were able to fill on site) and recommended a chest x-ray.  Olivia started the antibiotics, and managed to sleep a lot better that night.  We all tried to get to bed at a reasonable hour, which is never easy on a vacation after an amazing day.