Visitors, Wine Tasting, and More!!

This past week has been pretty busy around Hillsboro. Allen was in town from Wednesday through Saturday to pick out a place to live. After scoping out a bunch of different places, he followed in Apurva's footsteps and decided to join Janel and I at Creekside. He will be living approximately 10 seconds from us (door to door). Now I just have to get him to carpool with us at 7:00AM :).


Laura also came out to Portland with her mother to visit some relatives as well as Janel and I. We went wine tasting with them down by Newburg on Saturday afternoon. It is beautiful country down there -- I think that I like it more than Napa. However, I still think that I am a bigger fan of Cali. wines. Apparently this is Pinot Noir country -- and I am not a huge Pinot Noir fan, but wine tasting is still always a good time. We had one wine that has been served at the White House. I imagine the Bush's have exceptional wine pallets.


Sunday we took a trip out to see Ramona Falls, a popular hike near Mt. Hood, and drove up to Timberline Lodge. It was a good hike (I will write more about this later and show some pictures as well) ... but Timberline was actually pretty disappointing. This is the lodge where "The Shining" was filmed (specifically ... the outside of the movie ... the inside was done somewhere else).


One interesting tidbit of information that I came across today: They will be reopenning the trail that goes to the top of Mt. St. Helens in a couple of days. That should be an exciting/fun hike for the near future :).

Ramona Falls

Laura was out in Portland visiting us and her relatives this past weekend, and joined Janel, Pablo, and I on a hike out to Ramona Falls near Mount Hood. It was a beautiful day. It got a little bit warm, but all in all was not that bad. There were flies that apparently were bothering the other three, but apparently they were not very interested in me. :)


The hike was a steady climb throughout, and passed through a few different environments on the way to the falls. Near the parking lot the path was almost sandy. I think this was volcanic sand, but I am not really sure. Below is a picture of Hood as we crossed a river.





After about a four mile hike, we made it to Ramona Falls. The light did not make for nice photos (especially with our simple cameras) but was a beautiful spot. It was also very cool near the falls, which made for the perfect lunch spot.





Here is a picture of Janel and Laura on the bridge below the falls.





After the hike we drove up to Timberline Lodge. This place was actually pretty disappointing this time of the year. I would like to go up again when there is more snow.


You can see all of our pictures here.

France Pictures Uploaded

I have added our France pictures to the photo gallery. You can see them here. I plan on writing a little journal about it, but have not had a chance yet.

France Internet

Well ... internet in France was pretty crappy. It was all I could do to check my work email, so I did not have a chance to upload pics or anything yet. I plan on doing that this afternoon / evening.

Retirement Savings

My dad sent me an interesting quick read on retirement saving today from the Wall Street Journal (see article here). The short story of the article is that people should be saving about 15% of their salaries for retirement (including any contributions that your company may make to your account). This is quite a bit higher than the traditional 10% that used to be the conventional wisdom. Anyway ... if you are like me and are doing a bit of thinking about how much to put into your 401K and how much to save for a down payment for a house, this article is a good read.