Posted March 29th, 2009 by collin
I was fortunate to have two of my best friends in the whole world travel up to the great Northwest and pay a visit to Erika and I. Well, primarily they came for all of the great micro brews that Oregon has to offer, but we came in a close second.
Mike, Ben, and Ben’s mother landed in Portland on St Patty’s day. We stayed at an Embassy Suites in Downtown Portland, which is right across the street from Kell’s Irish Pub, which hosts its own annual Irish Festival during St Patty’s weekend.
However, before hitting up the festival, we started off the great brew tour at Deschute’s Brewery in downtown Portland. Ben hooked himself up with a growler of some of Deschute’s finest, and we enjoyed some of the finest brew and food that Oregon has to offer.
From there we hit up the sauna and spa at the hotel like it was going out of style. We felt like rock stars in this hotel, because this was a much nicer hotel than we anticipated it being. After rocking out the sauna, we journeyed over to the festival and began our reign of terror at the Irish Festival.
The festival rocked, they had a bunch of traditional as well as modern Irish bands playing - even a U2 cover band straight from Ireland. Very good music, a TON of people, all drinking Guinness and having a good time.
Surprisingly, we took no pictures that first day (I, for one, blame all of the alcohol and Ben’s great idea of doing a shot of Patrón, combined with my surprising lack of camera), so there’s no proof that we were even there on St. Patty’s day except for a lousy t-shirt. And in case you were curious, I figured the following formula out:
Beer at noon + sauna run + lots of food + lots of Guinness + Patrón= 10PM bed time.
Mikey and Ben at least had the ‘we had a 6+ hour flight’ excuse. Erika and I are both just getting old and can’t hang like we used to.
The second day, the brew tour kicked into full gear. First, a stop at Liquid Solutions so Ben and Mikey could ship a crapton of special and hard to find brews back to Florida. Their shop is freakin’ amazing, they had more beers then I could possibly take in. The owner, Matt Maples, was a class act and very cool dude.
From there we hit up (on Matt’s recommendation) the Highland Still House for a lunch/brew. Great food and brews at this joint - they have a killer Shepard’s Pie and French Dip.
After HSH, we hit up Hair of the Dog brewery and got to meet their founder Alan. Cool ass dude, very typical Oregonian. This was probably the highlight of the trip for Ben, who himself is an aspiring brewmaster himself.
He had this AWESOME squash beer - it might have been the tastiest beer I have ever had.
Pictures that we did manage to take while we were in Portland:
California Trip
After our Portland trip, we returned to my current home town of Springfield and rocked out there for a night and recovered from Portland. The next day, we decided to take a trip down to the Redwood National Forrest to see the Redwoods, and so Ben and Mikey could both say that they had seen California.
We also drove back to Springfield up the Pacific Coast Highway, and got to see the Oregon Coast. The Redwoods and Pacific Coast are two of the most amazing things about the Northwest (and some of the only ones that don’t involve beer or mountains).
Here are our pictures from that trip:
Cougar Dam
The next day, we aimed to take Mikey to where he would see snow for the first time. We made the trek from Springfield up to Cougar Dam and Sahalie Falls. Cougar Dam, to me, is much cooler than Hoover Dam. The valley that you overlook at Cougar is just simply breathtaking.
Pictures we took while at Cougar Dam:
Sahalie Falls
I honestly didn’t know if there would still be snow at Sahalie Falls or not. Being a transplant and rookie when it comes to Oregon weather, I didn’t realize that snow would still be up there this time of year.
Turns out, there was tons.
Mikey not only got to see snow, but got to see a lot of it. Check it out:
Overall, the trip was a blast. It was good getting to see my homies from Florida again, and especially nice getting show them in person why Erika and I wanted to move up here so badly.
If you made it through all of that, congrats from reading the longest blog post ever. I’ve got some more updates to come out on this site in the very near future, so check back soon…..
Tags: beer, Friends, Good Times
Posted March 24th, 2009 by collin
It’s been nearly 4 months since I’ve updated this blog. Long gone are the days of snow (it only snows a couple days a year here in Springfield), and there’s been a lot of stuff that has happened in Oregon and in my life.
Many big changes are on the way. I’m in the process of redoing this site, and should be done with my changes soon. There are some big announcements on the way.
Stay tuned…..
Posted December 16th, 2008 by collin
This one was a real snow storm, not that poser storm we saw on Saturday.
I had to drive in this icey crap to work, and let’s just say i failed at it. I started off like a champ, driving slow, not losing control, making use of the Jeep’s 4 wheel drive. I was even poking fun at all of the chaps who’d lost control and run off road on my way to work.
I make it all the way to the office, only to lose control cruising through one of the roundabouts in front of our office. I hit the curb and popped the tire off of the wheel of the Jeep:
Luckily I was in the Jeep and not in the Honda. Had I hit this curb with the Honda, there was a good chance that I would have completely ruined the rim.
Here are some more pictures from the drive into work:
Tags: Winter 2008
Posted December 16th, 2008 by collin
This past Saturday we had our first experience with snow. It snowed during the night and we woke up to our yard and cars being covered in snow.
This was a weak snow storm and most of it melted by the end of the day.
Tags: Winter 2008
Posted December 16th, 2008 by collin
We had been keeping Obi Wan in isolation while Vader adjusted, but they’re both used to each other and are starting to get long just fine. Surprisingly, this wasn’t the catalyst to convert Vader to the dark side, and he’s still pretty chill. There was no doubt an adjustment period, but they’re starting to become buds as you can tell:
Tags: Add new tag, Kittehs
Posted November 22nd, 2008 by collin
For a sort of “birthday surprise,” Erika’s sister-in-law Jamie was supposed to bring us a picture of a one of kitten that one of her friends recently had, to see if we’d be interested in getting another buddy for Lord Vader.
A Young Obi-Wan Kenobi will be the second young jedi in our household. Hopefully this one doesn't turn evil like our other one!
Well, she ended up bringing one instead. I’m sure there was no scheme between her and Erika to make that happen. Sure enough, we’re going to keep him and teach him the ways of the force.
Since Vader was still shell-shocked over the whole move, we had Jamie and Toby take him back until Thanksgiving to give Vader time to adjust.
I’ll be taking some more photo’s this weekend of our new digs and posting them up. Hopefully we’ll have some furniture soon!
Tags: Kittehs
Posted November 10th, 2008 by collin
This past weekend I took a drive through the Willamette National Forest and ended up at the Three Sisters mountain range outside of Sisters, Oregon. Still being on East Coast time, I was awake at a crazy hour and was able to make it to the mountain range before sunrise, and was able to see the mountain at the literal brink of dawn.
Here is a photo gallery of the mountains:
From there, I drove through the Mount Washington and took some great pictures of the sun rise. I also drove through some snow (it’s kinda hard to tell from the picture), which was the first time I had seen snow in over 20 years:
From there I made it to the Sahalie Falls waterfall. This was just amazing. Got some great pictures of the water fall and river:
After the Sahalie Falls, I drove to the Cougar Dam. This, to me, was way more impressive than the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam is definitely bigger, but seeing the Cougar Dam in the morning and all of the fog that covered the mountains was just breath taking. All you see at the Hoover Dam is a bunch of rocks. Doesn’t compare in my mind:
Posted November 10th, 2008 by collin
Erika and I found a house to rent and will be moving in this week. It’s small, but since we sold off everything we own in Florida it’ll be nice to start off slowly and the low rent will help as well.
The house is on a nature preserve, so there’s a large area behind our house that’ll never be developed on, which is very nice.
I will post up some pictures on we get moved in and situated.
Posted November 4th, 2008 by collin
We didn’t really take as many pictures on the trip as we would have liked to. Erika and I put an emphasis on getting here as quick as we could, so we kinda sacrificed stopping and taking pictures along the way.
Here are the pictures that we did manage to take:
Tags: Driving from Florida to Oregon
Posted November 4th, 2008 by collin
Day 7:
City/State: Springfield, Oregon
Arrival Time: 10/30/2008 4:30 PM PST
Miles Traveled: 574
States Traveled: Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon
Final Mileage Total: 3601
We finally made it into town around 4:30 local time. We hit our first traffic jam of the whole trip in Portland (if you want to call it a traffic jam, it was more like a slight delay).
Despite the troubles in Denver and Boise, it was overall a very good trip. We got here at the almost exact time that Erika planned for us to get here.
Now if only we had a place to live…….
Tags: Driving from Florida to Oregon
