It has been a really stressful few weeks here. Eventually I’ll blog about it all, but let’s talk about one of the busy but fun parts… my trip to Oregon!

Back in April I was feeling a little blue, and texted a friend who moved to Oregon a few years ago. Because she is such a fun, kind and positive person, I essentially invited myself over. That trip happened last weekend (sorry y’all, I think I brought the Texas heat with me) and it was such a lovely break from reality. Also, like, no one told me… Oregon is BEAUTIFUL!

She lives in the valley, so I flew into Portland where we did essential Portland things like go to Powell’s book store and eat delicious food. I’ve been to a ton of book stores in my day, but completely underestimated Powell’s. So. Many. Books.

Even though I have a stack on my nightstand that I’m “totally planning to read” right now, I still picked up a few. Channeling my inner horse/dog girl, I got a researched nonfiction narrative about dog showing and breeding which should be interesting (whenever I actually read it) since I’m so on the fence with purebred versus rescue mutts these days. I also picked up a Frank Madden showing/training book from the early 90s as a gift to my trainer (spoiler alert in case you’re reading this… surprise?). It has a ton of exercises and charts that I think she’ll geek out on, and a totally laughable dedication for George Morris for being “such a great role model and friend.” Barf.

The rest of our time we mostly spent hiking through Fern Gully to look at waterfalls. Living in Texas so long, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be around tall trees. And Oregon’s are huge even compared to North Carolina standards. All the greenery was amazing. I think it’s my late-30s-year-old-lady coming out. But ferns growing naturally all around the path did me a damn delight.

And the waterfalls! Zomg! In North Carolina, there’s a park with some falls that people drive hours to go hike and see. I too have hiked and seen those waterfalls. They were nice. They were pretty. We were all like, yay! waterfalls! But um, they can’t compare to the ones in Oregon.

We went to a smaller park/hike first, and I was like “ooo what amazing waterfalls what a treat” and my friends said oh no, wait until tomorrow. That’s when we went to Silver Lake Falls and I was like “Okay, well that’s a waterfall!” Then we proceeded to learn how to do slow exposure photos on iPhone to photograph said waterfalls to death, and wish it wasn’t so hot when we had to walk back up a mountain to get to the car later.

To round out the weekend, we decided to head to the coast to escape the heat. The temperature dropped 40 degrees in an 1.5 hour drive. But the closer we got, the foggier it was. Why were we driving into the cloud? We came for the scenic views and to watch the sunset, but standing on the beach you couldn’t even see the ocean. It was comical.

That’s when we learned that the hotter it is inland, the foggier the coast is. With the heat wave this weekend, you can imagine it was pretty damn foggy. But we ate delicious crab soup on the dock and walked around the fishing boats. Nothing wrong with that.

It was a great, much needed escape. Now I’m back in the throes of my bananas life. Trying to figure out how to blog about the horse shopping without jinxing myself, putting down any horses/sellers, and generally being on the up and up about the whole thing. But that’s a problem for another day.

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