The Beautiful Northwest

My last three weeks were spent in the lovely Northwest, soon after flying into PDX I went with my parents to Eastern Oregon to see my grandparents.

After a nice dinner with my great Uncle Ed and Aunt Martha, I shared some photos and stories of Africa with them.

Here I am with my Hug grandparents :) I loved spending time with both of them-- listening to a few stories my grandfather told me about his childhood homes and enjoying lovely meals my grandmother prepared.

Before our drive back home we dropped by to see my Grampa and Grandma Bailey! It was good to see them and to get to hug them both :)

On the way home I snapped a shot of this sign... and sadly it was the "last shot" taken by my camera-- The photo below was taken at Wahkeena falls in Oregon. After I saw that my screen had been broken I decided to test out taking pictures without it. By the blurriness of this and a bunch of others I determined its death.

While in the Northwest I was happy to go to a few places I had missed while away including the beautiful waterfalls, Seattle, and the Oregon Zoo :) Another great trip was a train ride to Klamath Falls to see my Grandma Hodges!! It was such a blessing to get to see her and spend some time sharing with her about my recent travels. She's currently at Marquis Care at Plum Ridge rehabilitating after having a few falls recently.

Seattle was beautiful with coffee and cousins :) Anna and I drove up to visit our cousins Rachel and Ruth and see Seattle with them. I stole Ruth's camera and snapped a picture of us climbing the stairs up to "the pig" where we met up with Rachel at lunchtime.

After walking around Pikes Place and strolling along the waterfront, we drove to the Locks and watched some of the boats go by.

Rachel and I spent a lot of time laughing and lounging after we'd done a lot of walking all day :)

Right before leaving for Missouri, my mom took me to the zoo and we walked around all morning seeing all the changes that had been made. I used her camera of course to snap some photos of my favorite animals :)

The Polar Bears were actually quite active... probably only due to the fact we were visiting them while they were being tossed their lunch :)

My favorite is of course the giraffe :)

I had a lovely time chatting with my mom as we walked around and saw a few animals I hadn't seen while in Africa :) I love my mom!