Portland and Things That Go Boom!

Hello family and other readers!
I'm being a slacker about blog posts. I'm sorry. I need to write about Portland and the Fourth and stuff like that. I guess I should do that.
Therewere ten of us that went to Portland last weekend. The boys left on Thursday night and went camping near Mount Hood. The girls (and Christian) left on Friday morning, bright and early at 6:30. The drive is quite nice, as the interstate follows along the Columbia River in Oregon. We stopped on the way in (about 20 miles from Portland) and went hiking up to Multnomah Falls. It is supposedly the fifth highest waterfall in the US. So I read on a plaque. It was quite a hike, with a paved trail that was straight up-hill for a mile. We hiked back down (and I believe this is where I got a call from the family) and got back on the road to Portland. Since we were there so early, we couldn't check in to our hotel. Instead, we had lunch at a 50s-style diner in the mall, then headed into the heart of the city. We got some maps and directions, then dropped a few people off and went to check in to the hotel. When we got to town, we met up with the guys and wandered the city for a bit. We stopped into Nordstrom because some people needed the bathroom, but a few of us girls got waylaid by the shoes. There were shoes easily over $700 there. Yeek! We walked all over town, and made sure to go to Powell's Bookstore, then decided to grab dinner. Powell's is fairly ginormous. It is supposedly the largest independent bookstore in the world. I believe it. They have maps there. After that, it was time to stake out a spot for watching fireworks. There is a river walk type park that we camped out in, along with half of Portland. The people of Portland, as a side note, are strange. There was a very non-Asian man in front of us who had on some sort of ninja costume thing. And his hair in a top-knot. It was strange. Then there was the girl whose nose was attached to her skirt by a chain. There was also a naked woman. Apparently she was peeing behind a bush. Strange.
So, back to the fireworks. They pulled up two barges, one on either side of this bridge, and shot the fireworks from there. I have lots and lots and lots of pictures of fireworks. I had to move closer to see around the trees, which was definitely a good decision. Very nice show.
Saturday morning we went to the Portland Saturday Market. It was a rather large street market that had all sorts of local artists and creative people selling their work. I picked up a few things there, but they are surprises for people, so I can't tell about them. They also had food vendors there, so we ate lunch at the market. I had a delicious gyro made right in front of me. There were tacos, chinese food, and even african food. After the market, we headed to the south end of town and, after several detours due to poor navigation on the part of Thelma Louise (she picked a road that wasn't there), we finally ended up at OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). OMSI is pretty stinking cool. We saw an OmniMax movie on sea monsters. There was an interactive room full of things you could do that demonstrated basic science principles. We used our bodies to make an electrical connection and light a lightbulb...It also made our muscles twitch in our arms. We also made flying machines out of paper cups...I built a cross-braced structure and tested it on the moving platform. Mad props to me that it didn't fall down (and hadn't when I came by 10 minutes later). There was also a dinosaur exhibit with lots of fossils. Very cool hands-on museum for kids and big dorks like us. We grabbed a late lunch in a very cute cafe, then we decided to go play pool. It turns out us girls are not that great at pool. We had fun anyway.
Sunday, we went to the Portland International Rose Test Garden, which was absolutely beautiful and which yielded a large number of pictures. We also went to the Portland Japanese Gardens and walked around for a bit before we joined in on a special event they had going on. They had people who taught you how to make origami, then helped you write your wishes in Japanese and tie them to a bamboo branch that you could take with you.(I just looked it up and it's called the Tanabata festival)
Once we were done there, we grabbed Thai food at a cute place in town, then headed back to Richland.
This weekend's adventure: Camping at Cle Elum lake. Hopefully in the Wish Poosh campground, but they don't take reservations. We'll see. We're looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend. Maybe do some kayaking, but only if we want to, of course. Enjoy the pictures!