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Our Oregon & Washington State Vacation (August 1999)

This was a last minute vacation that we took to see the west coast & visit Chesters family.

The following pictures of some of sites that we saw which include the mountains & animals in zoo. I drag my poor husband to the zoo everywhere we go! He even took me to the Toronto Zoo in December when it was 14 degrees out! But that is another story.


The Beautiful Ocean!!


The ocean was beautiful!! Haystack Rock is much bigger in person that it appears in this picture. It was very impressive to see.

Seaguls & other birds nest inside its crevices. They fly around the top & are quite loud as you near the rock itself.

The day we were there the tide was out & we were able to walk out to the base of the rock. When the tide is in you can't get close to it. This picture of my husband was taken here at the base of Haystack Rock. This is one of his favorite places in the world.

This was taken outside of our hotel the day we left the coast. We are now on our way to Portland.


Mt. Hood From Portland!


This mountain is visible from every corner of Portland, Oregon. Everyday I looked for it & everyday I saw it.

Portland is known for it's beautiful rose gardens. This picture doesn't even begin to show how lovely they are. This is something that must be experienced in person like the rest of this vacation!

These waterfalls were in Washington State I beleive but were very pretty to see also. I love waterfalls like these.


Mt. St. Helens!


This is the Mt. St. Helens area. It was very pretty & informative. I didn't know that so much devistation had happened there when the volcano exploded. In this picture you can still see the trees that were knocked down by the force of mud & water. The trees are scattered like toothpicks on the mountains surrounding the volcano.

These next couple of pictures show the beauty of the land surrounding the volcano. All of this was created by the explosion & the mud slide that followed. The landscape before was much different than it is today.

At one point, the closest we could get to the volcano, I was standing there looking around at the mountains & as I looked up I could see all the trees that were destoyed. We were surrounded by them.
The valley below the volcano is still barren & is called the "blast zone". Everything that was here was destroyed. New trees have been planted around the area but here in the "blast zone" is where they are letting nature replenish itself.


Seattle, Washington & the ZOO!


We had a great view of the city from our hotel. You can see the space needle in the bottom picture. The open air markets down by the water were wonderful. I recommend that you go there when you are hungry. You will kick yourself if you just ate a meal & went there. The smells will make hungry all over again.

We went to 2 zoos, one in Portland & one in Seattle so I've combined the pictures together.

We will start out with my personal favorite ~ the bears!! Look at how nice the posed for these pictures!!

This polar bear was swimming back & forth!

Some else here was taking a nap. There was a lot of that going around today.

These cute little guys are the reason we went to Toronto Zoo in the winter time! BRRRRRR! I just had to know what a RED PANDA looked like! Well you don't have to torture yourself because we did the hard work for you! Here he in all his glory.

Kinda looks more like a raccoon eh?

Well lets move on something we know what it looks like!Butterflies!

Some very bright birds were there too!

Some wolves were lurking about! Can you tell I like the zoo & every animal in it yet?

Well this is the last picture of our vacation. I hope you enjoyed looking.

Our next vacation is to England & Paris, France. I should have really neat pictures from there if the weather is nice. I hear it will be just like it is here at Christmas time though. We'll see, maybe the Eiffel Tower is pretty covered snow.....