Our Journey to Portland, OR

WOW.

Our first day of vacation was crazy.

Here's a quick overview:

• Our flight from Charlotte to New Orleans was quite bumpy. We flew right over Tropical Storm Fay and she made our flight 20 minutes longer than expected. We exited the plane in New Orleans at 2:18pm Central time. Our flight to Denver began boarding at 2:05pm. That created problems.
  
• When we got off the plane in New Orleans, we realized that our next flight was leaving from the other side of the airport. Our plan? RUN.
• Because we had to go to another concourse to catch our plane to Denver, we had to go back through security. How convenient. I took my shoes off, shoved my backpack through the scanner, picked everything up, and ran through the airport shoeless, clutching my belongings. We missed our flight to Denver by 2 minutes.
• The United Airlines agent re-routed our trip through Dallas, TX instead of Denver. We were scheduled to leave New Orleans at 4:45pm, but we caught an earlier flight at 3:30pm. No time for Louisiana gumbo or red beans and rice :(
• There was one toddler on our flight from New Orleans to Dallas. Guess who she sat directly behind? That would be ME. She kicked, screamed, and whined for the entire flight. I kept giving Aaron the I'm-on-vacation-and-can't-deal-with-a-screaming-child look. He just laughed. Good thing the flight was only an hour and fifteen minutes.
• When we arrived in Dallas at 4:45pm, we put ourselves on standby to catch the 6:30pm flight to Portland. Because we missed our flight to Denver, we were scheduled for a 9:05pm flight to Portland which would put us there at 11:30pm west coast time - 4 hours later than our original scheduled flight. All 3 of us were able to get onto the earlier flight at the last minute.
• We sat on the runway in Dallas for an hour waiting for a thunderstorm to pass. The pilot said we should wait for the "squirrelly winds" to die down before we began our trip to Portland.
• Once we finally got into the air, we chased the sunset for 3 hours. I think God changed all of our flights yesterday just for that time I would spend praising Him and His beauty. It was simply magnificent.
• Sean's friend, "Super Sean" picked us up from the airport and took us to dinner at Deschutes Brewery and drove us around town. We didn't go to bed until after midnight (3am east coast time!).

We're currently sitting at the coolest breakfast place ever. It's called McMenamin's and it's an old elementary school that's been transformed into a hotel/theater/restaurant. The coffee is the best I've ever had (yes, even better than Starbucks) and the fruit is incredibly fresh.

Our plan for today is to make a quick trip to REI, pick up our rental car, hike up to Multnomah Falls, and end up at Seaside on the Oregon coast.

(Sean's photo from a previous trip to Multnomah Falls)

Check back for daily updates on what we're getting into in Oregon :)