Move In Day

We drove Christopher up to Bellingham yesterday to move into his dorm room.  He was so excited to be going away to school.  It is a long drive up and back.  We got up at 0400 to leave by 0430 to get on the road.  We made pretty good time getting there.  In fact we were about an hour early pulling into the dorm and couldn't check in until 0930 but as soon as we got to see his room and get his things moved in, Bill and I left to come home.  So I was pretty tired and my butt hurt when we got back after being in the car for nine hours.  But happy we could get Chris successfully launched.

Birthday Festival

I had a week long birthday celebration this year.  On Monday, a couple my co-workers took me out for lunch at Hot Pot and Sushi which was fun.  Thursday night, Bill and I went to Beaches to have dinner with other members of a board that he serves with.  On my birthday, I got presents from some co-workers and from Chris. And that evening, the family went to Mexico Linda--one of my favorite spots--to have my birthday margarita and Mexican food.  We took Chris to Bellingham on Saturday to get him moved into his dorm room.  Tonight, we are going out to dinner with friends and then to the symphony.  Unfortunately, my friend, Denise, that I go to AORN with every month took vacation to spend time with her daughter in California so we couldn't celebrate our birthdays together this year.  And I still intend to go out to lunch or dinner and a movie with my friend, Colleen, but she was out of town this weekend as well.  My only disappointment is that the Packers lost their game today.  All in all it has been a wonderful birthday week.

Legal

Chris had a milestone birthday this weekend.  He turned 21.  He and some friends went to a movie and out beer tasting and to a sports bar on Sunday afternoon.  Monday we had our family celebration with Thai and cake.  He had a nice birthday celebration.

Shakespeare in the Park: A Tale of Cymbeline

Bill loves Shakespeare and discovered free Shakespearean theater in the parks here in Portland a few years ago.  We try to go to at least one every summer.  This year it was "A Tale of Cymbeline" at Reed College.  It was a fun afternoon getting a little culture.  Here are a few images from our Saturday afternoon.

 Introducing the play

 Princess Imogen was very Disney like.

 Imogen and Posthumus saying good bye.  Imogen's father banished him.

 Imogen misses Posthumus.

 King Cymbeline and his wicked wife.

 Cymbeline greeting the Roman ambassador.

 Roman soldiers looking on.

 Imogen and Posthumus reunited after they each though the other dead.

 Imogen reunited with her long lost brothers who were kidnapped as infants.

A happy ending.  Battle with the Romans won.  Family reunited.  Wicked Queen and her son dead.

Kil'n Time

Tom and Maddy went to a pottery class at a place called Kil'n Time.  What a clever name!  Not sure what Tom is working on there.  Looks like a dragon or dinosaur though. 

Explore the Shore

I always love seeing when Tom or Maddy post photos from Pensacola.  Maddy's dad visited them last week and they did some exploring around Pensacola and Mobile.  Loved these pictures that Pete posted after they went to the beach so I had to scrap them.  So jealous.  It has been a year since I have seen Tom.  I miss him.  So hoping we can get to Pensacola for his graduation in November.

A Little Jaunt Over to Eastern Washington

Bill has been wanting to see Dry Falls for awhile now.  We flew over it several years ago on the way back home from Chelan but it didn't mean much to me viewing it from the air when I hadn't seen it on the ground and learned more about it.  When my software go-live at work was delayed, I decided to take the two days off that I had had approved for vacation off after all.  And we flew out to Moses Lake so that we could see Dry Falls and Grand Coulee Dam.

Before we left Pearson, I saw six F-15's taking off from Portland Airport.  Seeing them take off always makes me smile. We had a good flight going to Moses Lake.  Some of the things we saw were the usual--the Cascade mountains, Bonneville Dam, etc.  I enjoyed snapping pictures as we went.  One of the more fascinating pictures I took was of Pothole Reservoir near Moses Lake.  We had never seen that before and from the air you could actually see into the various potholes in the water.  I also saw some big white birds flying over the water there.  Not sure if they were some sort of heron or crane.  I suspect maybe sandhill cranes as they do have some at a nearby wildlife refuge.  And after we landed there, we saw some C17's making approaches into the airport.  McChord AFB uses it as a training airport.  So it was pretty impressive to see them flying over the runway.

After we landed, we drove to Grand Coulee Dam first to see if we could get a tour.  It was a nice tour--mostly just seeing the Pump-Generating Room which pumps water into nearby Banks Lake to be used as irrigation for much of Eastern Washington.  But the plant looks much like that of the power plants as well.  We drove across the whole dam in our tour bus.  It is about a mile wide and 550 feet tall.  It is the biggest dam in North America and the third biggest dam in the world so it is quite impressive.  It supplies power to eleven western states.  We got to stop and take pictures over the spillway and look over the edge. 

On the way back to Moses Lake, we stopped at Dry Falls.  It too is an impressive location.  It is believed to be the biggest waterfalls in the world at about 3.5 miles wide and 400 feet high.  That makes it ten times larger than Niagara Falls.

Geologists believe that the landscape of this whole area was shaped by massive flooding during the Ice Age when Lake Missoula's ice dams gave way and water came rushing through this area at 65 miles an hour-forming the great coulees, potholes, and lakes in the area and leaving errant boulders all over the landscape from far away places.  During these floods, Dry Falls would have been an actual waterfalls.  Even though it was a little bit out of the way, I asked Bill to fly us to Dry Falls before we headed for home.  I wanted to see it from the air again now that it had more meaning for me.  All I can say is WOW. 

A few more pictures of evidence of this flooding both on the ground and from the air.  Between Grand Coulee and Dry Falls, there is a huge rock formation called Steamboat Rock.  A geologist labeled these lands as the Channeled Scablands and you can really see what he meant by that from the air and on the ground.  I was fascinating by the boulders in fields along the road--left by the flood waters as they came through that area.

We had a great couple of days flying and exploring Eastern Washington and learning more about the geology and Ice Age history of that region.