March at Lan Su Chinese Garden

In Portland's historic Old Town Chinatown, one of Liz's favorite Oregon places:

Every month there is something new happening in the garden. Not only are the flowers and plants always changing, but there are sometimes animal visitors as well. In late January, you could watch hummingbirds flitting around the treetops from the upper level of the tea shop. In February, there were lions in the garden. This late March visit also included a wonderful surprise - a huge owl resting in one of the garden trees. We didn't catch any photos of the hummingbirds, but the lion and owl photos are displayed near the end of this post.

The US Bancorp Tower overlooks the garden and was a particularly glowing shade of pink Saturday morning.

Beautiful white blooms near entrance.

A rock garden? Artificial mountains and rock gardens are an important part of Classical Chinese gardens as mountain peaks represent virtue, stability and endurance in the philosophy of Confucious and in the I Ching. (According to Wikipedia)

If remembered correctly from a February tour, this plant will have a bloom with an extremely stinky smell. Ironically, it's located just outside the women's bathroom. Looks like it's getting close to blooming.

In the courtyard near the scholars study.

Near the scholars study. Have never noticed the writing on the pillars until the flowers bloomed by them.

Dappled sunlight on the tiles.

Can you see the owl sitting in the upper middle branches?

And from February:

Liz had an up close encounter with a "lion" during the Chinese New Year celebration.
(Photo by Elizabeth Goodman)

Also from the New Year celebration:

Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm

Tulip Fest Near Woodburn, OR:
A favorite spring tradition in Oregon is a visit to the tulip fields near Woodburn, about 40 minutes south of Portland. The Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm has put together quite a festival on their farm, complete with a large children's play area, a cow train, paintball, vendors selling food and trinkets,steam tractors, and best of all, 40 acres of beautiful flowers.

So many beautiful flowers!

You can order your fall bulbs on the farm, as well as buy buckets like this one:

Love these!!

Trams and hay rides connect the fields to the parking, store and activity area. You can also pay $3 for a bumpy cow ride or $5 for a longer, comfier tour of the fields.

The Gardens are a great place to have a picnic lunch away from the crowds.

Otis, in the tulips.

They had three of these running while we were there.

About the most scenic paintball practice you can get!

SOCAL Summary - Favorite Moments, Most Memorable, Lessons Learned, Most Dangerous

This rode most of the trip with us on the front dash.

After our last trip, a friend asked us to do a "best of" summary and we waited too long and never did it. So we'll do it right now while it's fresh in our minds. To start, here's everyone's top "five":

Sofia:
1. Going on Space Mountain in the front seat.
2. Toy Story Shooter Ride - Buzz Lightyear Astro Blastors.
3. Mickey's Fun Wheel.
4. Thunder Mountain.
5. Going to the Redwoods.
6. Delicious hotel breakfast, specifically the biscuits and gravy. (@ Modesto Super 8)
7. Going Home.
8. Getting caricature done.
9. Picture with Moving Statue Guy at Universal Studios.
10. Minion Mayhem ride at Universal Studios.
11. Universal Studios tour- including seeing Norman Bates stalk the tour bus.
12. California Poppy Fields.
13. Wildlife Safari - all of it.
14. Getting ice cream at the Olive Pit.
15. Watching Cinderella.
16. Oregon Vortex.

Getting caricature done, she loved every moment of this!

With Otis at the Redwoods.

Otis:
1. Transformers Ride at Universal Studios.
2. Rode Tower of Terror without screaming.
3. Rode California Screamin' twice.
4. Rode Space Mountain by myself.
5. Great Chandelier Tree.
6. House of Mystery Gravity Change.
7. Getting drenched by a whale, twice.
8. Going on studio tour at Universal Studio - the cool animation in the tunnel (he doesn't want to ruin it for you guys).
9. Playing the tablet at night.
10. Getting home to see my computer all sparkling.

Before the epically awesome Transformers ride at Universal Studios.

Fascination at Disneyland's Main Street Magic Shop.

Liz:
1. Driving through the Redwoods in the sunshine with the sunroof open.
2. The warm, sunny weather and all the beautiful flowers of southern California, including the poppy fields.
3. Adventuring together as a family and seeing the kids experience all these things for the first time.
4. Catching up with family we hadn't seen in a while.
5. Pirates of the Caribbean ride when you go over that first big drop.

With her favorite flowers!

These flowers were in a shopping center parking lot. Beautiful flowers everywhere!

Patrick:
1. Carne Asada burritos at Roberto's in Encinitas, CA.
2. Having new roller coaster buddies in the kids.
3. Watching Sofia delight in learning to swim and dive.
4. Visiting family.
5. Staying at a hotel across the street from Disneyland.

He found his own creek!

Ride Buddies - these guys had a total blast together.

Most Memorable Moments:
- Swimming in ice cold pool in Northern California.
- Talking to Dr. Jin about our brains.
- Riding Mickey's (not so) Fun Wheel.
- Seeing Cinderella movie together.
- How serendipitous the Alice and Wonderland ride was for our last ride at Disneyland.

Moments before the horror began, on Mickey's "Fun" Wheel.

What we learned:
Sofia - Don't judge a book by it's cover. Some of the rides that looked really scary were actually very fun. (Space Mountain, Thunder Railroad, California Screamin')
Otis - The Oregon Vortex is a crazy place full of anti-gravity stunts.
Liz - 4D means that either something will at some point spray or mist on you, a smell of some kind will be released, something under your chair will whip your ankles, snow or wind or bubbles will be released; either all or some combination of the above. In case you wondered.
Patrick - Sometimes a bucket of (boat) trash can be a good thing.

With Bubba Gump's Bucket of Boat Trash

Most Dangerous:
- The strollers at Disneyland. Seriously.
- Lane splitting: It's not illegal for motorcycles to ride in between lanes on the freeway in California, and they do it going 70+ mph.
- The price of food and drinks at all the theme parks.

And now to end with one of our favorites from the trip, a luscious In-N-Out Double Double meal (complete with a place mat for your lap.)

So tasty, and so easy to order!

We hope you've enjoyed this account of our southern California trip. We'll be back on-line blogging about some of our Oregon adventures soon. Until then, we wish you many happy travels and adventures of your own!

Oregon Tourist Classics - The Oregon Vortex and the Wildlife Safari

Day 14 Medford, OR to Home!

On the home stretch, we first took on the mystery of the Oregon Vortex.

What is a vortex, you may ask? According to the Oregon Vortex folks, it is a spherical field of force, half above the ground and half below the ground, that causes numerous unique phenomena in the area. The most famous of these phenomenon is the claim that nowhere in the circle do you "normally stand erect", instead the visitor "inevitably assumes a posture that inclines towards magnetic north", thus causing the perception that people's heights change relative to each other, depending on where they are standing within the vortex.

We wished that we had brought along our own level, but then again, can you fake a level? Something to consider. They used levels to show that the platform below was indeed level on both sides. I was careful not to move my camera or position between these shots, although it's clear that I wasn't centered between the two. Can you see a difference in the angles here?

We may print these out and paste them on a white background to measure the angles and see what we come up with. It's interesting that they don't allow videography on site, only still photos. We managed to find a video on line from the 90's of the experiment posted above so we'll include that in our examination. We had hoped for more details about the Vortex and how it is measured, as the scientific handbook you can buy in the gift shop lists the different times of day that the Vortex field increases and decreases but the handbook was vague about the forces behind the Vortex and how they are measured. Hmmm.

The house of mystery, a former supply shed, slid off it's foundation and came to rest in this unique position. It has been replicated in many places but is unique because it's the only one within a vortex. The perceptual illusions are truly amazing. You can roll a 2 liter bottle what absolutely looks to be downhill and it rolls back to you. You can balance a broom to stand up on it's own.

Following our closely guided tour of the vortex, we traveled another hour north to Winston, OR, where we waited in a surprisingly long line to tour the Wildlife Safari. People come from all over to see this attraction. Nestled into 600 acres of gorgeous rolling hills, animals from around the world call this place their home. Accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Wildlife Safari is known around the world for it's successful cheetah breeding program. Normally very difficult to breed in captivity, 176 cheetahs have been born in the park.

This guy looks relaxed! Cheetahs are evidently quite susceptible to stress, so this is a good sign.

Fun to see the hippos out of the water.

In this section of the park you can feed the animals and birds from your car.

It was a lovely drive through the park, and we'd do it again, because you get to see different animals up close each time, as they are free to wander. Here's a sight we saw often on our trip:

That's Mistletoe growing in the trees!

We'll post a trip mash-up and summary tomorrow, but for now:

There's no place like home.

Adventures in Food

Olive Oil tasting at the Olive Pit: Yumm!

Day 13: Modesto, CA to Medford, OR

We learned something new today, and that was how much food production,and shipping and packing, goes on in central California. We didn't have time to visit all the yummy sounding options, for example, Oakdale Cheese, where they make Gouda cheese, or Beekman and Beekman, and their honey mead. Because we still had many miles to drive we stuck to places right off the freeway. The Blue Diamond Almonds packing plant and store was our first stop. They don't give tours of their factory any more but they do have an educational display in their store, as well as a tasting bar for almonds of all different kinds:

Salted Caramel, Mocha, Coconut, Sriracha and many other flavors of Almonds.

Notes on how almond production happens.

Patrick's mom, Ruth, gave us a great tip for our second stop, The Olive Pit. They used to stop here on family trips to California, and the nostalgia made the stop doubly fun. Located just off the freeway in Corning, CA, this place will knock your socks off if you love olives!

This is one small portion of the store.

You can try many of the varieties of olives that they sell.

Olive trees outside the store.

After thoroughly stocking up on olives and olive oil, we were on our way through northern California. All along this trip, we have heard so much about the drought and the water shortage. This really hit home when we passed by Lake Shasta. Here's what it looks like, mid March:

Poppies!

Day 12: From Carlsbad to Modesto, CA via Antelope Poppy Reserve

Today we started our journey home. On the way we stopped at the Antelope Poppy Reserve. Liz's favorite flowers are California Poppies and it just so turned out that they had a bumper crop growing this year. The Reserve website posted that they would be in full bloom right about the time we were heading home. Unfortunately, California has had an unexpected heat wave this last week and most of the poppies died. Here's what the park looked like when we arrived:

There was still hope as we had heard the poppies survived on the north facing slopes, so we hiked up to check it out. Nope! Not much there, a few flowers here and there. However, from the top of the hill we could see a bright orange hillside across the highway with a trail of cars running from the reserve to a dirt road through someone's field. We followed along and here's what we found:

That's Otis in Ninja mode out there amongst the flowers.

And Sofia!

Not a flying monkey. :D

Look at the hillside full of orange in the distance! I can't imagine what this must have looked like a week ago, before the heat.

From the Antelope Valley we headed west to catch up with the 99 towards Visalia. We saw several of these trucks, full of lemons, along the way:

We don't see these at home!

And finally, a delightful stop for dinner with some of Patrick's California family, the Heinrichs! We got to chat with our Grandma Adelia's brother Les and his wife Marie, along with their kids Deanne, Darrell, Keith, Arlene and Arlene's husband Allan, along with their boys. We enjoyed getting to know this side of the family a bit more and were so happy to get to share a meal with them.

... and for the young ones, here's why you have to be cautious in poppy fields.