Bubbles were a big hit with all of the kids at the party.

Zachary had his checkup on his birthday, so I took the day off to spend with him. He weighs 35 pounds and is now 39 3/4 inches tall. After his appointment, he wanted to go to “the petting store”, but it wasn’t open, yet, so we went by my office and visited a few people. Then, we went to two pet stores, looked at all of the animals, and petted all of the cats up for adoption. He wanted to go to McDonald’s for lunch, so we went, and he played. He was having so much fun, I had to carry him, screaming, out of McDonald’s.

#5 – See the world in San Antonio (Tower of the Americas). I have eaten lunch in the restaurant at the top of the Tower of the Americas during a Spanish Club trip my sophomore year of high school. And, apparently, I was involved in a hair-pulling incident in the elevator there at a very young age.

#10 – Sip a Dublin Dr Pepper. Growing up in De Leon, this one is pretty much a given. A Dublin Dr Pepper is the only soft drink I will drink other than Coke.

#25 – Learn the two-step. Yes, but not very well. Thank you, College Station.

#28 – Order a Brown Derby at Dairy Queen.

#35 – Memorize the Texas Pledge of Allegiance. Sadly, this one is only in the last year and only because of PTA meetings.

#37 – Ride the Ferry Between Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula. I did this one on the last day I worked in Galveston. It was rainy and dreary.

#49 – Drive the Freeways at Night in Houston. I did this one quite a few times.

#50 – Attend a Classic High School Football Game. There were so many… Go Bearcats! One of my favorites was the 1990 2A State Semifinal game between De Leon and Pilot Point. De Leon won 9 to 7. What a game!

Only 55 more to go.

Later, it got even worse.

And, it was snowing sideways.

The kids and I were supposed to drive back to Fort Worth last night, but the roads were too icy. After sitting on the highway for over an hour, we decided to turn and go back to De Leon for the night. I’m so glad we did. It was nerve-wracking to drive on that ice. We still had drifts in our yard late this afternoon, so the kids got to play in the snow after opening presents.

We decided to hike the 1.5 miles to Indian Beach. Along the way, we had a lot of great views.

Here is Tillamook Rock Lighthouse from Indian Beach; the lighthouse is a little over a mile offshore and is no longer used.

After our hike, it was still cool, but we had warmed up quite a bit. It was about lunchtime, so we were going to stop in Cannon Beach for lunch, but Bill didn’t want to deal with the crowds. Cannon Beach had tons of shops, and I think I could easily spend an afternoon there looking at everything. Unfortunately, there are not many places to eat between the beach and Portland, so we stopped at a Dairy Queen. I was looking forward to drinking a nice big Coca-Cola, so I was sorely disappointed to find that this Dairy Queen served Pepsi instead. At least they served Dr. Pepper.

Next, we stopped at Vista House. At this point, I wish we would have turned around and driven the extra 17 miles to Larch Mountain, but we decided to go on to the waterfalls. I was afraid it would be too hazy to see the five mountains (Ranier, St. Helens, Adams, Hood, and Jefferson) from Larch Mountain. So, we continued down the historic Columbia River Highway.

The first waterfall we visited was Latourell Falls. It was only a short hike down to the waterfall.

Next, we stopped at Bridal Veil Falls. Here, we had to hike a little to see the falls.

We also took another short hike to a view point overlooking the gorge.

Our next stop was Wahkeena Falls. I loved these falls. It had started to warm up a little bit by the time we got here, but we got a nice cool spray standing on the bridge in front of the falls.

We decided to hike a little ways up the Wahkeena trail. There were a lot of smaller falls and nice views of the gorge along the trail. This is one of the falls.

We decided not to go the full 3 miles of the trail, since we hadn’t brought water and wished we had better shoes for hiking, so we turned around after a mile and a half.

Our next stop was the big waterfall – Multnomah Falls. These falls are right off of the interstate, so they get crowded.

Our final stop in the gorge was Horsetail falls.

After this stop, we drove across the Bridge of the Gods to Washington and had lunch at Skamania Lodge. After lunch, we drove to Hood River and then to Mount Hood. Here is a view of Mount Hood from Hood River.

Our final stop of the day before heading back to Portland was Timberline Lodge on the south side of Mount Hood. We got a close-up view of Mount Hood.

We were also able to see Mount Jefferson to the south.

This picture was taken near the Johnston Ridge Observatory looking northward. All of the white lines you see are trees that were knocked down in 1980. Most of the slopes facing Mount St. Helens looked similar to this.

The flies were horrible! They got progressively worse as we got closer to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, and there, they swarmed the signs and people, so our stay there was a little shorter than we had planned.

This chipmunk was trying to steal food from some people that were eating lunch.

This is a photo of the crater from Johnston Ridge Observatory.

A few facts about Mount St. Helens from the visitor’s guide:

• The eruption leveled 230 square miles of forest in less than 10 minutes.
• The mountain lost 1300 feet of height.
• The eruption began with a landslide that buried 14 miles of river valley to an average depth of 150 feet.

After a late lunch in Castle Rock, we drove back to Portland to the International Rose Test Garden. I mainly wanted to visit to get a picture of downtown Portland with Mount Hood in the background and I had read that this was a good place for that. But, I was surprised by the number of rose bushes. My photos don’t do justice to the size of the gardens.

This is one of the best photos of downtown and Mount Hood. I actually got to this viewpoint by walking between some of the tennis courts by the garden.