VAKV @ Portland | Seattle | Vancouver . Summer 08

Our last day in the Portland area started off with some tax free shopping at Made in Oregon. We (yes, including me) all shopped for souvenirs there before we head south to Silver Falls State Park. To my astonishment, I even found hot lips soda in Made in Oregon! We shared a bottle at the store as if we were starting our own sampling station. Anyways, we got to Silver Falls State Park by roughly 2pm after passing a lot of Christmas tree farms. It's quite a scene to see so many Christmas trees during the summer, not to mention that those evergreen trees are the signature of Oregon that we see them on most license plates!

Silver Falls State Park is just absolutely amazing because there are 10 waterfalls within a relatively small area. We had our little picnic with melted cheese, ham and egg sandwiches by the river and hiked for about 3 hours. We got waterfalls overloaded seeing 7 different waterfalls in a day, but they are beautiful. We were able to walk behind the waterfalls and tried really hard to stay out from the puddles, we got really close to the waterfall and saw rainbow at the double falls, we also see bunch of Oregon grapes and huge tree log on our way. We were also lucky enough to get out before it started raining hard.

We did stop by the first Walmart of our trip where we found out their postcards were the cheapest in town (bummer for us, cause we got them previously, but now I know where to take people for souvenirs). Unfortunately, we weren’t able to shop at the outlet because we got there too late (Seriously, I wish they close at 8pm on Sundays). We had dinner at a Thai restaurant with my family and then we went to my aunt’s place where Vir made her signature balloons for my cousins. I am also absolutely surprised that my grandma seems to remember Angela--they have only met once when we were around 12 years old! We also caught on a bit of the Olympics closing ceremony.

As rain approached PDX, we got out of here and continued our trip in Washington. I was so looking forward to go to Olympic National Park!!