West Coast Trip - Washington and Oregon

We're finally back home from our "Jordan-graduated-from-dental-school-and-has-a-few-weeks-off-before-he-starts-his-pediatric-residency-so-let's-go-on-a-fun-trip" trip. As you can see from the map below, we covered quite a bit of ground and got to see a lot of the west coast.
We flew into Seattle and were hosted by our friends Brett and Jenna, who just moved out there for an orthodontics residency and a job as a real dentist, respectively. We felt like they had been living in the Pacific Northwest for years, based on their knowledge of the area and how well they had already adapted.

We saw the Olympic Statue Park (right along Puget Sound), UW's campus, their ward, downtown Seattle, Pike Place Market, and the Museum of Flight (which included a tour of the real Air Force One). We fit a lot in during our 36 hours.We picked up a rental car on Monday afternoon and headed south into Oregon, then drove east to the Columbia River Gorge. We were a little tight on time, but we managed to hike Multomah Falls and got good use out of our rain coats.We then met up with Jordan's family who had driven up from Las Vegas in the now-infamous 15 passenger van. We spent a wonderful week at Jordan's uncle's beach house in Lincoln City, where we watched World Cup group play, hunted for starfish and agates, shopped at the outlets, attempted to go into the frigid water, flew kites and had bonfires on the beach. It was a really wonderful vacation within a vacation.On Sunday, the family dropped us off in Eugene on their way home to Vegas. We picked up our rental car and drove through dense forest into high desert to Bend, where we had dinner, admired the scenery, and headed back the same way we had come.

The Three Sisters (you can see about two and a half here)

We made it to Sweet Home to visit some more friends who had recently moved to begin working (you guessed it: dentistry). Above is the lake we saw as we drove into their town. Jordan pulled over to take a picture just as the sun was setting. We were given a lovely tour of Sweet Home and had a nice time with our friends the Dimonds, and then headed west to the coast, where we were met with sights like these:

real-life sea lions!windsurfers!

Next up: redwood forests, San Francisco, and more