My Parents Visit

My parents came for a visit last week. Tuesday morning we had breakfast and I showed them around Intel. They then went out to the coast while I finished up my work week. Friday I had a "quarterly" with my group where we all went out to Cannon Beach (Ecola State Park actually) for a BBQ and an afternoon of no work. This was a lot of fun, and my parents met us and got to meet many of the people in my group. We had a good time all in all ... I will have to get some pictures from Yen who actually was more of a camera fanatic than I usually am. Friday night they came and watched Janel and I play soccer.


Saturday we did the "visitor" thing. We hit up the Rose and Japanese Gardens in Washington Park (I was too cheap to ever go to the Japanese Garden before) ... and then wandered around downtown a bit (REI, Powell's, etc). Janel was out taking her final teaching tests while we were doing all of this. She has passed all her tests so far ... and it is good that she is finally done (I don't have to listen to her complain about tests ever again (hopefully)).


Sunday we went on a hike to Eagle Creek. We have been there before, but this was the first time that I did the 12 mile trip out and back from Tunnel Falls. This was a great hike, although there were a ton of people out. Below is a picture of all of us at Lower Punchbowl Falls. It was supposed to have the falls in the background :) ... but oh well.





It was very interesting coming back to this trail (we were here two weeks ago). The water level has come down like 6-8 inches since then. I had to wade out in the river to see Punchbowl Falls two weeks ago, but had no trouble taking a picture this week. I brought my chaco's ... so I decided to wade all the way across to make use of them :).


We had a great lunch about a mile past the "High Bridge." There were a couple small waterfalls that we could see through the trees, so we made our way through the forest to the river to a great lunch spot.





Tunnel Falls was huge ... by far the best falls on the entire trail. It is pretty cool ... there is a tunnel that goes behind the waterfall so that you can follow the trail around. Just past Tunnel Falls is another waterfall. It is not really possible to see it though, because of the angle, but there are some huge cliffs (see picture below). I was going to make my "newbie" backpacking trip down this trail ... but I might have to reconsider because of the possibility that people are afraid of heights. We shall see...





All in all I had a great visit with my parents :). You can see all the pictures here. Related Link