The Fruit Loop

This past weekend Adria and I decided to go see the Hood River County Fruit Loop. Here are some pictures from the excursion:

On the way to the Fruit Loop, we stopped at Bonneville Dam and we decided to stop by for a spell.
Here is Adria standing next to one of the dam's original turbines.

























Here are the fish ladders that allow the migrating fish to get past the dam. Unfortunately we visited the dam after the most of the fish had already swam upstream as the biggest month for fish migration is September. We did see some fish go past the fish ladders which was exciting. We spent quite some time looking for fish at the fish ladders from both the top and from the side view (there is a fish camera that you can view online). The fish ladders also seem to be a popular spot for sea lions to eat the fish. However, those days may be numbered as their is a movement to allow the hunting of a limited number of sea lions in an effort to protect the salmon After looking at the exhibits in the visitor's center we were back on the way.

---

Driving along the Fruit Loop is really nice because you have wonderful views of Mount Hood. It is nice to see Mount Hood up close because it seems so far away when you see it from downtown Portland. Here are some pictures of Mount Hood that I took:

---

One of the fruit farms that we stopped at was Rasmussen Farms. This farm had a lot of activities besides just buying apples, pears and whatnot. It had a corn-maze and a place called Pumpkin Funland. Adria enjoyed it so much she begged me to take a bunch of pictures of it:

Here is Adria with the pumpkin Jackson Five















Here is a pumpkin warrior.




















Here are some pumpkin children having a sack race




















I don't know why Harry Potter is wearing a dress, but there he is.














This two pumpkins are going on a date. What I couldn't get in the shot is that the girl pumpkin's father is sitting in a chair with his dog in the same room as the kiddies.

---

After leaving Pumkin Funland, we stopped by another farm that had some farm animals. Adria found thought that the three little pigs sleeping were cute:
This same farm had some sheep that you could feed. So we purchased a small bag of feed and Adria started to feed them. The sheep rushed towards her once they realized that she had food. I thought that some of the sheep would get their heads stuck in the fence, especially this sheep with his big horns. It was much different than the times that Adria and I would feed llamas when we lived in Keizer. With the llamas we often would have to throw food at them to coax them to come over.


Here are some pictures of the sheep's feeding frenzy:

---

On the way home we enjoyed the sunset while listening the the Beaver's victory over the Huskies on the radio. I was pleased that the Beavers put forth a good effort win in Seattle for the 3rd year in a row. I am also pleased to see that Sammie Stroughter starting to be the player that I always knew he could be after I returned 6 punts for touchdowns in a game against Portland State in NCAA Football 2006 last summer (as a side note, Sammie placed 4th in the Heisman voting that year before going pro, losing to Oregon State's freshman quarterback Ron Mexico who would eventually lead Oregon State to a 48-0 record as a starter, 4 National Championships, win 4 Heisman Trophies and shatter every collegiate passing record).

The Greek Festival and Bald Hill

On October 7th, Adria and I went to the Portland Greek Festival along with Adria's mother and Adria's younger brothers Hayden and Ty. Adria's mom wanted to go to find some genealogical information about the grandparent's of Adria's dad (as they were married at the Greek Orthodox church in Portland).
Here are some pictures from the event:

At the Greek Festival to buy anything you need to exchange your U.S. currency for the currency of the Greek Festival. In my hand is a pile of "talents" that we used to buy some Loukoumades, Baklava, and Gyros. I will leave the detailed food reviews to my brother Jeff, but I will say that the food was good and well worth the trek to the east side of Portland.





There was some dancing by youths of Greek descent that we enjoyed while we were eating our food.

---

After finishing her previous quilt, Adria has found other sewing projects. She has been working on sewing herself a new dress and she has completed a baby blanket for the baby shower of a friend from church. Below is what the blanket looks like. In the picture on the left, Adria is happy because the blanket is so cute and cuddly. In the picture on the right, Adria is sad because she has to give the blanket away.

---

Being a federal employee, I didn't have to work on Columbus Day. Adria and I went to visit my parents in Corvallis for part of the long weekend. We hiked to the top of Bald Hill with my dad and had a pleasant lunch at the top. We really enjoyed being able to get out of downtown Portland and spend some time in nature. We also enjoyed the view from the top.

Mid-Autumn Festival

Adria has finished the quilt that she has been working on. My mom lent us one of her quilting frames which was super helpful. I think that the major influence on this quilt is obvious. Below is a picture of the quilt while it was in construction:

And here is a picture of me using the quilt to keep warm:

---

Also, the Portland Marathon was last weekend. The finish line (as well as the start) of the marathon was just outside of the run was just outside of our apartment. This was both good and bad. It was interesting to see all the runners walking around in Mylar blankets during the post-run cool down period. So that was the good. The bad thing was that the marathon started at 7am and the registration started about 6am. During registration a race official was on the loudspeaker reminding the entrants where to stand and mentioning that it hasn't rained on the Portland marathon since 1984 (this fact was always met with much cheering from the runners). All of this, mind you, was happening at 6:30am. Needless to say we found it difficult to sleep through.

---

Recently Adria and I went to the Portland Rose Garden. We managed to get there while many of the roses were still in bloom. Adria wanted to make sure that I shared some of the pictures of the pretty flowers on the blog, so here they are:

---

Work is going fine. I am just finished up the last week of my stint working on graveyard. After working on graveyard for the past month I have come to the following conclusion: In Utopian societies nobody works graveyard (you could even make the case that in a Utopian society people seldom work, much less work past dark).

Adria has also been busy with work. Besides putting together her agencies annual health fair, Adria also just finished a report titled "Culturally Specific Populations Emergency Communications Project Report". The report was part of a project to create plans to help non-English speakers in the Portland area prepare for emergencies. A large part of the report was the analysis of 500 surveys that members of the Asian community filled out to determine how would be the best methods of distributing information about potential emergencies (i.e. the bird flu), and their current emergency preparedness (i.e. do they have a 72-hour kit). Adria's boss was quite pleased with how the report ended up, which made Adria feel that all of the stress that went into the report was worth it, as this report ended up being twice as long as any report that she wrote in college.