Oregon Roadtrip

Terry the Quilting Husband (TTQH) and I just returned from an “Oregon Roadtrip”. I took this week off from work for a part “staycation” and a part explore a little more of the state of Oregon. We did a quick jaunt to Portland, Oregon and then went to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Fest  in Woodburn, Oregon.

On the Road

TTQH did the driving and I got to sightsee on the road trip and work on my English Paper Piecing (EPP). I am still working on my first series/stash of hexagons (hexies) last discussed in my 02/05/17 post, Adventures in English Paper Piecing (Part II).

I am so glad I got into EPP, it is a great traveling project and very addicting. In a future post I will reveal just how many little hexies I have completed. Here is my lap during the road trip:

I have my coat on my lap. Why? Because of what you will see in the two images below: driving through the mountain passes (Mt. Hood area and Santiam Pass) there was snow. The photos below are from our drive back to Central Oregon, encountering snow in the Santiam Pass:

This is the price you pay when you live in the Cascade Mountain range region. Central Oregon itself is at 3500 – 3600+ feet, and when you drive through the mountain range areas to get out of Central Oregon, you are going to see some snow in the higher elevations even into late May and possibly June (Santiam Pass is at 4800 feet elevation). In the late Fall and Winter there is major snow and I will not drive to Portland from November to March. But if you like Winter sports, this place is a dream.

When we got out of the mountain passes, the weather was fine.

An interesting fact: According to Wikipedia, there are 318 mountain passes in the state of Oregon (List of mountain passes in Oregon). Some passes are above 7000 feet elevation! When you drive around Central Oregon, all you can see is mountains, mountains, mountains!

Craft Book Heaven (and Overload)

While in Portland, Oregon we spent an afternoon in Powell’s Books: The World’s Largest Independent Bookstore. Their book inventory exceeds 2 million volumes and I cannot begin to describe how large a bookstore it is – there are many levels and sections, assigned different colors. There is a map to the store and you can definitely lose someone in the store if you are not browsing together (thank goodness for cellphones!)

Their craft book section is mind-blowing and I spent an hour in there browsing while TTQH spent who knows how long in the Military History book section.

After my browsing, I took at stack of books to the coffee shop inside the bookstore and nested there with my cup of tea until TTQH joined me. I did not buy the all the books in my stack (because I did not need them, but they were fun to look at).

I did buy one book:

TTQH left Powell’s with a military history book that had been on his radar for a while.

Tulip Festival & Tasty Meal

After our Portland visit, we headed to Woodburn, Oregon to stop at an outlet shopping area that TTQH likes to buy his favorite sneakers (Converse). While at the outlet mall, someone handed us a flyer on the Wooden Shoe Tulip Fest  in Woodburn, Oregon. We decided, spur of the moment, to head there next.

This was my first tulip festival. I took a ridiculous amount of photos and here are some of my favorites:

The photo above, which I also used as a feature photo for this post, is my absolute favorite. This tulip variety was also my favorite of all the spectacular tulips we saw at the fest. I have many photos of individual tulips – I went a little overboard in taking photos, caught up in the moment of visual splendor overload!

While at the Tulip Fest, we went on a hayride around the festival and walked all the tulip fields (to be honest, after a couple hours we were burned out on tulips – ha!)

After the tulip festival, we went to eat at the Glockenspiel Restaurant in Mt. Angel, Oregon. It was mentioned in the Tulip Fest flyer and I had recently heard of it in the latest edition of Via Magazine (the AAA Travel Magazine for auto club members).

The Glockenspiel Restaurant is a German food eatery, which has a working glockenspiel mounted on it’s exterior which performs at various times during the day. We missed the most recent performance but I did find a YouTube video of what it looks like:

The Glockenspiel Restaurant 

The person who filmed the video has a narrative of the story/history behind what you are seeing in the Glockenspiel.

Here is our delicious lunch:

I look forward to more exploration of our wonderful state of Oregon in the future!