Quick visit to Oregon and Washington

After a quick ejection from Victoria, Texas, I found myself on a red-eye flight to Portland, Oregon and a job in Vancouver, Washington.

My co-worker and I, Toni, pretty much worked 10-11 hours daily and when Sunday came, it proved to be constant rain that dampened (was that a pun?) our sight seeing along the Columbia River.

However, as I was finishing up work mid afternoon last Saturday, I looked on the Weather Channel and saw there would be a 3 or 4 hour window of sunshine over at Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Wasting no time, I went back to the hotel, put on jeans and grabbed the Nikon for a 2 drive westward on highway 26.

Raining most of the way, there would be short bursts of sunshine and couldn't resist stopping off for a well timed selfie at a rest area with a really nice rainbow.













Moving on to Cannon Beach, I walked down on the beach near the Haystack rocks to take a few pictures.  Something that massive caused people to just stand at the shore and just gawk.  So did I.

It was just simply amazing.

Even though the sun was shining, the sunlight filtered through the haze like a flashlight shining through a dirty glass.

As sundown finally came, I drove the two hours back in the rainy darkness hoping I wouldn't meet a deer or elk along the way.

On early Sunday morning, I loaded up again hoping to find a little more scenery I could enjoy and drove up the Oregon side of the Columbia River past Troutdale toward Multnomah Falls which I've had the pleasure of climbing up the zig-zag trail beside it.

Today, there was just a whole lot more of rain than I was prepared to deal with.  Oddly enough, as wet as it was, I only saw one umbrella there wielded by a couple of Japanese tourists.  The locals just shrug it off.  I didn't have an umbrella either but it was because I'd failed to bring one.

I did drive up the road on old Scenic Highway 30 and took some hiking trails by some other falls and streams.

It was really nice walking under the canopy of trees which acted like a natural umbrella.

This trip is going to be short lived and expect to be out of here in a couple more days.  It's too bad I wasn't able to get my wife up here because she really enjoys this area.