Road Trip: Vegas, Baby!

The next stop on our road trip was Las Vegas where we showed Norman all the ways of Sin City.

By far Norman's favorite part of Vegas was this pair of purple velvet chairs in our hotel room.

The dog loved those chairs. We did also take him out to the strip quite a few times, and we even took in a fountain show at the Bellagio.

Truthfully, he preferred the chairs.

We saw the usual Vegas strip stuff while we were there.

We really liked the atrium installation at the Bellagio this time.

Eddy especially liked this crane made of flowers.

The best thing we did, though, was the gondola ride at the Venetian! We didn't get too many pictures since we were too busy being awkward about being on an indoor boat ride.

We also made a point not to miss the chocolate tasting at Hexx at Paris, one of the few bean to bar chocolate shops in the US.

So delightful!

Next up on the road trip is a fond farewell to Tahoe!

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Apparently Oregon has Waterfalls

This is a short post about a short trip we took to see some not very short waterfalls.

That's totally it! We just saw some beautiful waterfalls. Told you so.

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Road Trip: We Saw All of the Joshua Trees

We went to Joshua Tree NP and saw all of the Joshua trees while on our road trip!

This isn't even very many!

(Be totally unimpressed by the density of those Joshua trees.)

We pretty much saw the whole park including this beautiful view, which we were a bit to hasty to capture in a way that does justice to the view seeing as it was aggressively windy that day!

We saw tons of plant life.

Eddy always has to touch the sharp plants.

And we saw lots of rocks.

Eddy climbed a few of them.

We ended the day with my favorite Joshua Tree NP attraction: the cholla garden.

It was incredible! So many tricolored chollas!

But really the best part of the day was the delicious BBQ and weird live music we saw at this joint after a long day in the park.

Pappy and Harriets! If you're ever in the area do. not. miss. it.

Next up: Vegas, baby!

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Our New Rose Garden

We loved the San Jose Rose Garden.  We went there tons and we also volunteered there a couple of times.  We will certainly miss it.  That said, Portland has the oldest continuously operating rose test garden in the United States.  The first weekend we were in town, we made it a point to visit our new rose garden!

Spoiler Alert: This was not our first trip to this rose garden!

There weren't many roses in bloom yet, but we tracked down the few buds that were open.

The good news is that the rhododendron and the wisteria were gorgeous that day.

Also, there were a few other things to look at or mock or whatever.

Can't wait to obsessively visit this place during our residency in Portland!

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Road Trip: San Diego and More

We spent a little time in San Diego on our road trip, but we also did a couple of little side trips while we were there.

The first side trip we took was to the Getty, one of my favorite museums in the world.

We saw two great special exhibitions, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium and Noir: The Romance of Black in 19th-Century French Drawings and Prints. Both so good, especially the latter.

Also we took pictures of ourselves all over the grounds, which, let's face it, is the most important thing to do while visiting the Getty.

Also we took a little day trip to Tijuana.

I'm just going to be 100% honest and admit that the best thing we saw while we were in Mexico was this giant table of cheese. It smelled amazing.

We did manage to see a thing or two in San Diego as well, our favorite of which were the gardens in Balboa Park. Did I mention that Eddy loves to touch sharp plants?

I mostly just stand next to them. Exhibit A.

Exhibit B.

Not gonna lie. We also took Norman to Dog Beach in San Diego.  Again.

For Norman, this trip was basically one beach after another.

The next installment of the road trip chronicle is Joshua Tree NP!

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Road Trip: Cave Kayaking, The Dry Version

We took a whole day to kayak Channel Islands NP on our road trip!  We brought along one of those disposable waterproof cameras because they take such weird, old schooly pictures I just can't resist them.  They aren't developed yet because old schooly, so here are all the pictures we took on dry land.

Well, boats counts as dry land sometimes, I suppose. We took a boat over to the islands.

Here we are gearing up for our adventure in super flattering kayak outfits.

We also explored some historical buildings on Santa Cruz island.

Here's our little boat just waiting to take us back to the mainland.

It was a gorgeous day for a trip out to the islands and we saw so much amazing wildlife!

Afterwards, we felt a little guilty about leaving our Norman dog behind on such a great adventure so we made up for it the next day with a good romp on the beach.

I think he forgave us.

Stay tuned for the underwater camera photos (after we take them to a pharmacy to be developed like it's 1995.) Next up on the road trip is San Diego with a couple of side trips!

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