7 years

 Every year for our wedding anniversary, Jon and I go on a mini vacation together. This year, because Katherine is so small, we brought her with us!

We have been talking for years about going to Oregon, up to Astoria to visit the places where they filmed The Goonies. My Aunt and Uncle live in Portland, so we decided to make a whole big Oregon trip out of it :)

Our drive up was amazingly beautiful! Oregon has all the parts of Northern California that I love. Trees, trees, green, trees, rain and more trees!

Kate was perfect the entire car ride. She slept, I sat in the back and fed her with a bottle every few hours, and she would stare out the window babbling at the scenery. We think she likes trees too.

We were able to stay with my Aunt and Uncle which was perfect! We just crashed the first night and woke up first thing the next morning to visit the famous VooDoo Doughnut shop.

 My Aunt volunteered to watch Kate for the day, so she and my cousin, Claire had a blast with the baby while we waited in line for sugary deliciousness...

It was much smaller inside than I had expected, but totally funky and awesome!

We ended up with a dozen doughnuts that we picked out ourselves. My favorite was the VooDoo doll (pictured below). Behind it you will see the peach fritter, Captain my Captain, the butterfinger doughnut, the Tang doughnut and the fruit loop doughnut. ALL were delicious.

Jon's favorite was (of course) the maple bacon bar!

Supposedly the wait is normally over an hour long. Good thing we came on a rainy weekend! It was still packed, but we only had to wait about 10 minutes.

From there we trekked a few blocks to Powell's.

This bookstore is a full city block and 3 stories of rooms upon rooms of books. They sell new, used and out of print books. We spent at least a good 45 minutes drooling in their rare book room which was temperature controlled and included some books originally printed in the 1600's. (ahh!) I was almost too afraid to touch them. After 3 hours we had to make ourselves leave so that we could see other parts of Portland. I didn't even count the number of books we left with.

After Powell's we were hoping to eat lunch at a food cart, but they were closed for the weekend. Instead we stopped by the Keep Portland Weird sign:

And ate lunch at Sizzle Pie. They had quite the assortment of Vegan pizzas, which made me very very happy :)

After lunch and browsing through some thrift shops in downtown, we headed over to 23rd street where there are adorable boutiques and restaurants. Salt & Straw was recommended to us by my Aunt and Uncle, so we definitely had to get Jon some ice cream!

Their menu was full of amazingly weird flavors. Jon had the strawberry balsamic vinegar with black pepper. I had just a tiny taste. SO good! Jon also tried the honey lavendar and pear with blue cheese.

Although I didn't have any ice cream, I did get a pocket apple pie and some dark chocolate with sea salt. mmmmmmm

That night we went out for our official anniversary dinner.

Blue Hour in the Pearl District was absolutely FANTASTIC. They have a cheese menu that you order from before the appetizers. Jon was very excited about this. The atmosphere was unlike any restaurant I have ever been in before. They had lit tree branches covering the ceiling so it felt like eating in a park at night.

 After our fancy sorbet, we headed to Papa Haydn's on 23rd street for "real" dessert ;) It was just a totally different atmosphere and crowd of people. At 10:30 at night this place was PACKED and we waited about 15 minutes for a table. I didn't get a picture of my dessert, but I'm pretty sure it was the best thing I have ever eaten. Dark chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and real raspberries on top... I don't know what they put in this cake, but it was like a literal slice of heaven.

The next day we slept in and went to church with my cousins. Kate had a new outfit to wear (Thanks Deb!) But she looked a bit concerned about her face-to-bow ratio :) haha. So ridic. I love it.

 After church we visited Lynsi Barfuss and fam in Beaverton, met their grandma... and then hung out with my cousins for dinner and a little BYU TV. It was so nice to just have a relaxing family and friend day!

Monday we drove up to Astoria. Luckily we picked the day they were having a huge storm with 40mph winds and torrential rain. The freeway on the coast flooded and a semi tipped over on the bridge to the lighthouse, so needless to say it sort of limited our sightseeing options!

Our first stop (of course!) was the Goonie house:

 

We all got pictures in front of it, and then it really started getting rainy and windy. The house was a lot smaller in person than we expected. It's on this hill at the top of a gravely road. There is really no room for a lot of cars to be able to drive up, park and turn around, so they ask you to go up the hill on foot.

 

From there we went to the Astoria visitor's center where we found out that most places were closed due to power outages, or on back up generators. Awesome! We took our chances by going to the film museum (the old County Jail) where they filmed the Fratelli escape scene at the beginning of Goonies. It was open!

 

 

The jail inside was very small. It was a really working jail in town for a long time.

 

Jon in the cell where they filmed the hanging scene:

 

 

They even had Data's costume on display:

 

 

After a few fun mock movie scene reenactments we headed across the street to the Flavel House.

 

 

This gorgeous Queen Anne style Victorian was built by Captain Flavel way back in the day and is now a restored museum. Jon and I LOVE Victorian culture, so this was super fun to see. It reminded me a lot of the Winchester house in San Jose... but without all the weirdness :)

 

After a seafood lunch by the ocean we headed back to Portland and spent the evening walking around Pioneer Courthouse square and 23rd street.

Kate looking at the lights of downtown:

It was so much fun to see my aunt, uncle and cousins!

I used to hold Claire constantly when she was a baby. And now she holds my baby :)

The Hardy fam! Craig, Lynnette, Spencer and Claire.
(Camden and Nathan are both out on missions right now)

Kate was so wiggly she just wouldn't hold still for any pictures!

 

The Alston's

 

And then we headed home. It was adorable to see that after we had Kate buckled into her carseat she snuggled with Eeyore :) 

 

 

The drive home was rainy pretty much the whole way... all 10 hours back into Sacramento.

 

The nicest part was making up a story about clouds with Jon. We even got this one beautiful break of sun. My phone does not do it justice, but it was super rad.

 

As I thought would happen, we both fell in love with Oregon and would move there in a heartbeat. It was everything about Northern California that we love, plus some funk and a lot of Vegan food. Could not have been a better place to pick for vacation!