Oct 13, Part 1 - Portland to Boston

Blogs read backwards, which is fine most of the time, but if you're trying to organize a long series of photos in order and then have the days make sense, it gets messy. I don't like to put more than 5 or 6 photos in a post. People do it - I've done it - but it's harder to work with. I like the idea of making a post for each location, and there are going to be days with a lot of locations. I can make a whole day read forward, but then I guess you just have accept that the days themselves read backwards. I only wish that blogs had a "forward" switch for chronological stuff. Google, are you listening? Anyway, we'll try this. It worked pretty well for the part of the Belize trip I've posted so far.

The wake-up call was what time? It seemed so early, I think it was 4:30 a.m. Our flight was at 7:00. This is PDX. I've always liked our airport. It's small enough that it's easy to walk the whole thing. It's clean and it's attractive. It's also about as functional as they get.

Yeah. The obligatory first cup.

. . . and breakfast. We've been trying to eat healthier and on the low side of the glycemic index the past couple of years, and we hadn't give up yet. We were still trying to make good choices. It seems Starbucks has something they are now calling "oatmeal." It was probably better than having a muffin. Choices would get both better and worse over the next 10 days.

I love looking out the window. Lee likes aisle seats so he can get out easier. I vote for having to pester my seat-mate(s) to get out and having the view. I never get tired of it unless the cloud forms get monotonous. Best, of course, is seeing the ground. I think this must be the Rocky Mountains or something near them, based on the time stamp on the photo, which was 9:04 a.m.

This was taken at 9:45 a.m. - maybe Kansas? Nebraska? Iowa? The earth forms change so fast when you're flying. If I can look out, I rarely get anything else done, like reading or crossword puzzles. And thank god for digital cameras and not wasting a bunch of film. The plane windows are often a big impediment, but this one was almost perfect.

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Home from Florida

We got up really early. This isn't the night before, it's leaving our hotel in the morning. I had to return the rental car, I wasn't 100% sure I wouldn't get lost, and the airport was a good half an hour away or so.

Sunrise at the car return next to the airport. Gorgeous. I love it when the electric lights begin to match the intensity of the sky. I've probably said that before.

Back in the West. I don't know where this is, but it's a tweaked effort to get a good airplane photo from a bad original. I love taking pictures from the plane. Or just looking at the changing landscape. Give me a window seat and I'm happy.

Crater Lake, Oregon. Again, the original was pretty bad due to glare and a less-than-clear-window. The flight path to and from California often goes this close to Crater Lake. It's so beautiful and interesting with the cinder-cone in the water Click the photo and you can see the crater within the big crater.

Typical western Oregon from the air. It looks like there's a fire. We have a lot of these cotton-puff clouds usually. We're nearly home and glad to be back in a reasonable climate. Yes, there was a reason I moved to Oregon!

I always love coming into PDX. Portland has one of the prettiest and most user-friendly airports I know. It's even a good size - it's not tiny and it's not overbearing. Now we only had to drive two hours back to Astoria.

Kate goes home

I took Kate to the airport in Portland today, and she flew back to California on Alaska Airlines. I'd never seen this airline before - the one that has a picture of an Eskimo on the tail, but everyone thinks he looks like Bob Marley. I got to wait with her in the terminal. Remember when you could do that? I like terminals. It's deplorable that the actions of so few truly terrible people have affected so many. They probably didn't even have a security check at the airport today (I'm writing this from the future, and it's hard to remember that detail). You can see a slight reflection of the airport windows in the photo, and clearly the weather had changed quickly as it does here. The blue skies were gone again.

This was, of course, my first trip from Astoria to PDX - the first of many. Portland has a beautiful airport, and it's user-friendly, not too large, but big enough to eclipse the one in Grand Junction. I can't say enough about what Kate's help and presence had meant to me during the move. What an incredible friend. Now I was truly on my own to discover Oregon. I didn't know anyone in the state except my brother and his family, and they were several hours from Portland and further than that from Astoria. It had taken two hours to get from Astoria to PDX (1 hour east to Longview, and 1 hour south to Portland), and Gary, Beth and family were several hours further south of Portland on I-5.