Category: Roadtrips

While waiting for the San Antonio Zoo to open, Carter and I found this Japanese tea garden. We thought it would be nice for a quick diversion, but we stunned by how beautiful it was.

The San Antonio Riverwalk is a pretty amazing place. It was built down below the level of the roads and sidewalk, so from the Riverwalk you can't see or hear the traffic of the city. Every so often there are stairs back up to street level, and if you walk up you are often surprised by just how loud and dense an area you are in - you'd never know it from down below. The central section of the Riverwalk is lined with shops and restaurants, and the whole thing is thick with gardens, trees, and lots of stone bridges. Definitely a must-see.

After the zoo we went to the NASA Space Center in Houston. On the drive there we got caught in a crazy Texas thunderstorm. I remember how intense they are from when we used to live in Texas, but it was a new experience for Carter - she wondered if it might be a hurricane! The Space Center was awesome - they had a Skylab trainer that you walk through, and some of the originally-flown modules from the Mercury and Gemini programs. Lots of spacesuits from the early part of the space program, and other great stuff. Carter got to touch a moon rock! We couldn't go see the shuttle because of the weather, unfortunately. In the gift shop, they sell dozens of different patches - one for each manned NASA mission, just like the astronauts get.

We got really lucky at the Houston Zoo - the thunderstorms arrived right as we were leaving. The whole place was full of Live Oak trees like you see below - I love the way they grow out rather than up. They look so cool and gnarly.

First stop on the 2019 roadtrip was Hermann Park in downtown Houston, Texas. There's a man-made lake that we walked around, and saw lots of wildlife. Someone gave Carter a handful of peanuts, and she hand-fed the squirrels. We lots of turtles, and a whole bunch of baby ducks. And it stayed dry the whole time, even through it threatened to rain the all morning.

Carter and I found a cool US map poster that we hung up in the basement, and we're using colored sewing pins and embroidery floss to show the path of each of the roadtrips we've taken so far. I really like seeing them all laid out like that - it reminds us of all the trips we've taken so far, and gives us ideas of where we'd like to go next.

I've been to Washington, D.C. many times for work, but have never had a chance to just enjoy it as a tourist. Recently I had to go down there for a week for work, so I went down a day early so that I could spend some time exploring the National Mall. There are a bunch of free museums on the Mall, not to mention all of the monuments. I saw the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Museum of American History, the Washington Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial. I was pretty burnt out by that point, but will definitely be planning a trip back there, and everything was amazing.

This is just a random collection of things that caught my eye on the trip. Lori loved the "Shark Sighted" sign, and the "trees are greater than buildings" graffiti was pretty cool. But my favorite was seeing the start of Route 20, which goes all the way from Newport, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts - over three thousand miles away. Now THAT'S a roadtrip!

Once we got back near Portland we stopped in to see my cousin Vanessa, who lives near there. We got to meet her two kids - her son is four, and her daughter is just 10 months old. Her daughter took a real shine to Carter, as you can see!

Right off of the highway in the Columbia River Gorge is Multnomah Falls, the highest waterfall in Oregon at 620 feet. The trail up to the bridge isn't currently open to the public, but the view from the bottom was fantastic anyway! Crowded, though!