Sunday Walk

Last Sunday, Sandi and I took a walk around the Portland waterfront.  It's about a 4-mile walk across the Willamette and back.  The overcast sky and the tree blossoms provided great fodder for my camera.  We also walked through the 'Saturday Market' to see local vendors.  We decided to come back closer to our anniversary and get a nice local art piece to celebrate. 

 

This is on the west side of the river where the main water front park is. 

Looking from the east side to the west, highlighting all the blooming trees and the city.

Sandi sporting her KU hat (go Jayhawks!)

Portland has a nice city scape (also from the east looking west)
 

OSU

We've been meaning to visit Sandi's brother, Scott at OSU for awhile.  All our schedules worked out in March so we headed down to Corvallis late Friday morning. 

Scott has a great apartment about a mile away from campus.  The 3 of us walked to campus and found a great little hotdog joint for lunch.  After a quick stop through the local frozen yogurt shop we began our tour of OSU.

a on-campus walkable art sculpture

heading towards the libarary

clock tower

a beautiful mix of trees and structures

The is the 'Waldo' building.  We were lucky to find it!

The Beavers had a baseball that evening so we walked through the stadium to watch them warm up

What a great stadium

This is Scott's old dorm from last year

Scott had a class at that afternoon so we dropped him off and headed off to Albany.  Earlier that week, I emailed Jeff Gerig about stopping by for dinner.  They were more than happy to host us.  Jeff didn't get home until after 6:00 so we had a couple hours to kill by the time we arrived in Albany. 

 

We had a great time wandering through downtown.  We saw an art gallery featuring local artists.  The gentleman hosting that afternoon mentioned more of his art was on display a couple blocks away at City Hall.  The city pretty much closed up by 5:00 so we wandered over to the park along side of the Willamette river.  It was a really nice park, but made more interesting because of all the flooding:

stairs leading to the bottom of the river

Even without the flooding, it is a beautiful area

the shelter, playground and part of the ball diamond are under water

 

We arrived and Jeff and Katie's after it was dark and had a wonderful meal.  Jeff caught steelhead recently so they grilled that, along with veggies and rice.  Crepe's for dessert...

It was fun introducing Sandi to Jeff and Katie; we had a great time talking and laughing over dinner.

There's a moose in the parking lot!

View from the hotel parking lot

 

I took a pre-trip to Anchorage Wednesday and Thursday last week.  I needed to meet with the Anchorage Festival follow-up team in anticipation of the June 7 & 8 event.  Sandi assigned me one task: find a moose.

I mentioned my mission to the staff and they were more than happy to help out.  My colleague, Stephanie, and her husband Andy and I went out to down town Anchorage after work Wednesday evening to see the snow sculpture garden and grab some dinner.  The snow sculptures went from the divine to profane as you can see below:

After the sculpture garden we headed to a brewery for fish and chips.  The brewery overlooked the Cook Bay and it reminded me of restaurants overlooking the Puget Sound.

Still no moose.

My friends dropped me off at my hotel and drove off.  As I headed to my room, I got a text from my friends saying 'There is a moose in the parking lot.'  I quickly grabbed my phone and my camera and went to investigate.

Sure enough, there was a large cow munching on branches in the parking lot.  (My apologies for the low-quality photography: it was a little dark.)

 

Mission accomplished!

 

I had another day of meetings on Thursday but before I left I was able to see a little more of Anchorage.

Anchorage from a park near the airport

the dark spots are floating ice chunks

 

Anchorage is a beautiful city.  I reminded me of Bellingham because of the size, the bay and mountains across the bay.  The harbor reminded me of Seattle, so in a strange way, it was all very familiar to me.  I look forward to returning in June.