Portlandia

SOOOO about 2.5 months ago we headed to Portland for Carter and Kayla's wedding. We had a few days to explore around along with the wedding festivities and we TOTALLY LOVED IT! Portland downtown/city was a little weird BUT we loved the Coast! We landed around 1pm and head straight to Multnomah Falls. Mom and Dad & Andrea and Brent met us there. They drove up and just happened to arrive about the same time as us!

we hiked around a little bit and were THOROUGHLY impressed with our first views of Portland. It was so breath taking! SO MUCH GREEN everywhere you look!!!

on the bridge, looking down the smaller waterfall

We had a lot of fun in the gift shop and eating tasty treats there. They had HUGE ice cream cones that were pretty tasty. After hiking we headed to the hotel, got checked in, and headed to dinner. It was quite the rainstorm that night!!! I think it was the city's way of showing us just how it stays so GREEN! Kayla went through the temple that night.

Friday morning we got on the road to the Coast bright and early. We drove for about an hour and forty minutes through the most thick, dense forest of trees. It was still raining bit the fog against the green surroundings was amazing!
We stopped at Cannon Beach and headed out on the sand to see Haystack Rock.... SOOOO COOL!!

We saw LOTS of sea creatures on the beach.... all sorts of things that had washed up. Including:

jelly fish...

bits a pieces of crab that the birds were picking at....

we thoroughly enjoyed just walking along the beach with THIS BEAUTIFUL view! it was so stunning. ALL of us wanted to take a trip back just to stay at the coast!

Dad found this object.... and had quite a fun time with it. he thought it was some sort of Voodoo doll and did numerous chants and spells. It then turned into Indiana Jones's whip and we were entertained by a show along with MUSIC.

We ate lunch out on the coast and had some SUPER YUMMY, SUPER FRESH seafood!

After we walked through some of the gift shops and markets we headed back to Forest Grove to help with the setup of the reception. The quaintness of Seaside was AMAZING. I can't wait to visit again!
That evening Kayla's family had us over for a BBQ at her house. Darren smoked some AMAZING meat and we had a fun time getting to know her family and a little bit of her extended family.

Saturday was wedding FUN!!!! {see next post}
Sunday we didn't fly out until 5pm so we were able to spend some time in the City!

Voodoo doughnuts:

 ...and lunch with this GEM :) love her. i FINALLY got to meet miss Kalysta & Darci's hubs Steve. AWESOME.AWESOME.AWESOME.