So much fun

View of the Columbia River Gorge from Crown Point. It was a little cloudy in the morning.

Multnomah Falls.

The view of Mt Hood from the Hood River Fruit Loop area. This area is full of fruit orchards were you can go and buy fruit fresh at the stands or even u-pick at some orchards. We ended up not stopping at any of the orchards.

Mt Hood. I don't think I have ever seen the mountain with so little snow.

We stopped at a stream to take pictures.

Timberline Lodge. If you have ever seen The Shining this should look familiar!

View of the summit from Timberline.

On our way up the mountain!

Die Hard skiers and snowboarders!

The view of Timberline Lodge from up the mountain.

A die hard boarder. Crazy boy.

And a crazy summer skier.

Our view back down the mountain.

I had such a good day with Mary from Mich yesterday. She is a very sweet lady. And her niece....so adorable! What a pretty young lady. So nice, and so well spoken. I love how the kid of her generation are not afraid to do things, such as travel abroad. I never knew anyone my age who took off and traveled Europe at such a young age. And yet she has, my nephew has and my son has been to Japan three times. The only person I can think of who did that is Glynis. But I didn't know Glynis then, and she was also from the East Coast. Maybe it's an East Coast thing. Maybe because we are so much farther away being over here that it just was not something people around here did. I know a ton of people who took off for Mexico and Hawaii. Not me....at least not until I was OLDer......

Yesterday I took Mary and her niece up to Mt Hood. I took the long way around and started out stopping at Crown Point to look out over the Columbia River Gorge. What a gorgeous view. Then we stopped at Multnomah Falls. I love that place. A must see if you are ever in Portland. After that we drove to Hood River and then around the back side of Mt Hood and up to Timberline Lodge. If you have ever seen the movie The Shining, this is the hotel that is shown in all exterior shots. Really cool old hotel. I pointed out that the ski lift was running and not only were there skiers and snow boarders enjoying a very tiny spot of snow up the moutain, but people could also take a ride up the ski lift and walk around. I love doing stuff like that, and I could tell that Mary's niece wanted to go up too. So after walking around a bit, I manevered them over by the lift area and then suggested that we go down and see how much the ride was. Mary was a little hesitant, but when she saw that both her niece and I were up for it, she agreed to go. We got on the lift and we were about half way up the mountain when a man coming down passed us and said "Ladies....you can lower your bar!" Oh man.....thanks! Mary and I were a little freaked because we were just sitting on the lift chair hanging on to the sides for dear life but not wanting the others to know that we were freaked out about falling! Her niece had said something about there being a lap bar, but when we got on the lift the woman only said "Your bar is up there." Yah...so....She should have reached up and pulled the bar down to show us. It was funny. We felt to much better after we had the bar down on our laps! It was a much nicer ride back down.....with the lap bar pulled down the whole way!

I am not going to upload pics of Mary or her niece here. Too public. So I will upload those to Facebook where only friends can see them. Check them out there!!