ROAD TRIP!!

I was pleasantly surprised to wake up the day before finals ended to a phone call from my dear friend and former roommate Sara Fisher. She called to invited me to come along on a road trip through Washington and Oregon starting the next day. It worked out perfectly for me and I was more than happy to come along. The trip consisted of favorite former roommates Sara, and Jenny, Sara's cousin Monica, and Me. I am the only one of the four who doesn't have a mission call. It was a last big hoorah before they all leave. The original plan was to go to Spokane, Colville (Sara's hometown), then head to Seattle for a day, and Portland for a couple of days. We decided to forgo our day in Seattle because we wouldn't have had time to really enjoy it. (I guess I'll have to take another trip to see it, darn)


SPOKANE
Our first stop. The original plan was to drive to Colville the first night, but we got off a little later than we anticipated. We would have had to back track to Spokane early in the morning anyway, because we were going to Sara's little stud of a brothers track meet. Sara's Mom came up with the idea of meeting us in Spokane and getting a hotel room (her treat) and having a little sleep over. We made it to the hotel room at about midnight, and we did what any logical person would do...we got in the hot tub.
We woke up early the next morning, went to Jared's track meet. Then we explored Spokane.

At the track meet waiting for Jared to run.


RIVERFRONT PARK

This little goat was pretty cool. You feed it your trash and it just sucks it right up.



Just catching a piggy back ride or two.


MANITO PARK






COLVILLE
We hiked to the Colville C.
Sara and I at the top.
Sara thought that it was important that we saw this house. Besides hiking the C this was about all the site seeing that we did.






Driving to Portland



This is actually a motorcycle. We just happened to see it when me made a stop in the Tri-Cities area. The owner came out just as we were taking the picture.
Multnomah Falls

PORTLAND



We stayed with Sara's old high school friends in downtown Portland. One of them had this ugly cat. I'm not a huge fan of cats only because I hate cat hair, and this little kitty had really long hair that found it's way into all of my stuff. I was sleeping on the futon in the living room with Jenny on the first night. I sleeping so well until I felt this vibrating on my stomach. I woke up with that cat only a few inches from my face, and it was just laying on my stomach purring. It startled me, I just started laughing. I was out of it and I didn't know what else to do so I woke Jenny up and her first reaction was to get the cat off. It's not as funny when I tell people about it, but I still laugh out loud every time I think about it.

ASTORIA/CANNON BEACH

After spending the whole day in Portland we strategically left at about 5 with enough day light to make it to Astoria and see The Goonies sites. It took us about 2 hours to get there, I thought it worked out rather nicely.
The house from The Goonies





We knew that we only had about 30 min. of daylight left, and it was about a 30 min. drive to Cannon Beach where they filmed the last part of the Goonies. We had nothing to lose so we went for it. We did indeed make it right before sunset. I am so glad we did because it was probably my favorite part of the day. It was so beautiful. We tried to take pictures of it, but none of the pictures did it justice. I just soaked it all in.


After the sunset on the coast we were all ready for dinner. The only place opened was this delicious little Mexican place. Jenny was just so ravenous.
Driving Home

Our last stop in Portland was VooDoo Donuts for the second time in 2 days.

The box says "Good things come in pink boxes"
Our source of entertainment for a little while on the way home. We just played around with our hair doing stupid things with it.
We broke down in Burley Idaho. We were so blessed though. Our alternator went out, and we were able to make it to a Checkers before it got dark. The people at Checkers told us it would be expensive to fix and that it would take a long time to fix it. Lucky for us the exact same thing happened to Sara in Burley about a year before and she got help from these wonderful people who are friends of her cousins (or something like that). We were able to get a hold of the same guy again, and he got there so fast, and completely replaced the alternator free of charge. It was definitely a tender mercy. Even before we thought to call that guy we were all super calm, we all knew things would work out. The entire stop only delayed us 2 hours.
I am so grateful that I got to go on this trip with these awesome girls. I am so grateful to have friends like them. There are so many fun stories from the trip. I can't even begin to get them all on here. I know that we were being watched over. Everything that could have gone so wrong went so smooth. We had/have so many reasons to be grateful. Count your blessings.