My Passport’s Travels

Yup, the ocean’s still there! Sadly, we’re not going to be here much longer. But first – breakfast! We had found an interesting looking place on line – the Wildflower Grill. It was a lovely cottage on the 101 with huge picture windows overlooking a little meadow.

We had trouble deciding, so we split an omelette with sausage, salsa and sour cream (it came with the most amazing toast ever! Huge thick slices of buttery, crispy goodness with homemade strawberry jam and citrus butter. Next time – I’m just having toast and jam!) and the French toast with blueberries (3 full slices of the bread from the omelette, but this time soaked in an orange custard and pan fried with citrus butter. We ended up boxing 2 slices of the French toast bread for Bekah’s kids to enjoy tomorrow.

After our lovely breakfast, we stopped for a quick kiosk coffee (can you believe it will end up being the only time I get photomat coffee the whole trip?).

Time to hit the road! The trip back to Portland went through a different mountain pass. We stopped for a break in the town of Sheridan, which was evidently still celebrating Christmas!

We also stopped at their High School for an artisan fair. Lots of fun things – and amazingly, only one MLM table! It was fun and a great break on the drive.

The path to Portland continued through orchards – a lot of hazelnuts!

We made it back in plenty of time for our afternoon plans: the afternoon matinee of SIX! Natalya was able to join us, arriving just before curtain. It was a great show! The cast and band were strong and it was just as much fun as I remembered!

Afterwards, Natalya went to grab Joshua and we all headed to Vancouver, WA for a mid-afternoon dinner at McMenamins on the Columbia River. The crunchiest tater tots and wonderful burgers for everyone!

Dessert was a bit more challenging. We tried the Salt and Straw a bit further down the water front, but not only could we not park, but the line was out the door and down the street. Then we tried Treat in downtown Vancouver – which closed 20 minutes before we got there. Finally, though, we ended up at The Ice Cream Renaissance. Not only could we park, but there was no line and plenty of seating! While they had some interesting flavors, I think we all ended up with something fairly tame. But the Peanut Butter Blast was A-MAZ-ING!

They had games available to grab and play, so Natalya picked a movie trivia game. We never figured out how to play it, but had fun just trying to answer the questions. Finally, though, it was time to go. I needed to get to my hotel because I have a 5am airport shuttle to catch. It was a wonderful trip!!