Day 55: Vancouver, Washington

Vancouver is right across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.  We ended up here because we wanted to cross into Washington and also they have a Dairy Queen.  But before we got to the Dairy Queen we stopped by Vancouver Central Park.  You can't see that from the picture but that is what the sign to the right says.

Part of that park was the Fort Vancouver National Site.  We spent like no time here but it was still pretty cool.  There were some really nice grass fields and I guess they have had problems with people tearing it up because metal detectors and digging are prohibited.

 There were various buildings and gazebos.  That was pretty nice.
I really liked the cannons and cannon balls that they had on display in the park.  They were heavy and the real size.  There was a whole headstone looking thing that explained everything about the cannons.

After the park we went to Dairy Queen for lunch.  Granted there were a lot of us but it took forever for us to get our order. But it was a cool, old-fashioned Dairy Queen where you walked up to the window to order and then sat on picnic benches outside.

When we were driving Vancouver my mom was really confused by this sign.  So on the way out of Vancouver I took a picture of the "Save Drugs" sign.  Everything all checked out though.  It was a pharmacy where you could get discount drugs or something.  We didn't actually go inside.

Day 54: Lincoln City

Lincoln City is a city on the Oregon Coast.  A claim to fame that they have there in that city is that Abraham Lincoln came to their city.  He was on horseback.  Wikipedia article about Lincoln City.

There were various murals and other decorations all over town.  They were pretty fun.

The other thing that Lincoln City is known for is the ocean.  There are a number of beaches in the city.  We just went to one.

With the ocean you have to be careful because you never really know what the tide is going to do.  So there was a part of the city that part of the Tsunami Hazard Zone.  We knew about this because there were signs everywhere saying that you were entering and leaving that zone.  There were also signs showing the escape route if there was a tsunami.  Good to be prepared.

Even if you got away from the coast just a little bit it was still really beautiful.  Here was one of the streets in the more residential area of Lincoln City.  Those lots are probably for sale, people just haven't bought the land in order to build houses yet.

Day 53: Portland

To enter Portland there are a couple ways that you can do that.  To the left you can see that we entered on the freeway from the east.  In order to get to downtown Portland and Portland State University you need to cross that big bridge.  To the right is the bridge you take when entering Portland from the north.  The Columbia River is the border between Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA.

Though there were a lot of cars there were also a lot bicycles.  So Portland is known for being the bicycle capital of America.  It should all be known for all the pets that people have in Portland.  There are a lot of pets.

Another place we went was the Portland Temple.  On the left is the temple itself with the spires and Angel Moroni on the tallest spire.  Then we were also pleasantly surprised that there was a visitors' center that we were able to inside.  It was a small visitors' center but it was very nice.  There were a couple sets of missionaries there.

We were in Portland on Saturday and over the summer Portland has a Saturday Market.  It was a lot of fun.  It reminded me a lot of the рынки that were all over Russia and also the Baltic States.

Something that was really nice was that on the streets of Portland there were these drinking fountains as we were walking down the Pearl District of Portland.  It was pretty sweet!