Ms Darlene visits Oregon

Flying home is such a drag, especially when you're flying from the west coast to home and negotiating time zones.   It means to get home a decent hour, you pretty much have to be at the airport in Portland late morning and even with that, the possibility of landing in Baton Rouge or New Orleans can go way into the hours.  At least once, I've landed at midnight.

My company views flying a spouse to meet you as a gain because you don't lose the Friday going home and the Monday returning.  So with that in mind, Ms Darlene flew out for a long weekend in the northwest.

Originally, we'd planned on making a run up to Seattle but she said she'd prefer to see snow and mountains.  Ah ha! Mt. Hood would be just the ticket.

She flew out on a Thursday and so I took Friday off as a vacation day and blasted our way up to Mt Hood after visiting places like Multnomah and Wahkeena Falls .  Snow became very real by the time we reached Sandy, Oregon and she wasn't disappointed.   Many hotels higher on the mountain were booked solid so we booked a room at one of the lodges, just below the big ski area.  The scenery was gorgeous, especially for a couple of Louisiana residents, and spotted several deer near the lodge.

Saturday and Sunday was spent in and around the Timberline Lodge where we rode the ski lift up and gawked at the beauty like a pair of flatland goobers.

Ms Darlene has now deemed Portland/Mt Hood as her favorite place in the world and is now a Sneaux Bunny.  Bear in mind that she said the same thing about Maui, Los Angeles,  Honolulu and Carmel.  This too may pass.

Anyway, it was great and I loved her coming up for a long weekend and look forward to her joining me in another location.

After Portland, it's on to Denver for a brief two week assignment.