December 5, 2011 - Catching Up Part 3 - Japanese Garden in Portland

On November 6th after stuffing ourselves, Carter, Val and I decided to go to the Japanese Garden in Portland.  Val and I had never been there.  So we headed into Portland to check it out.  We weren't the only ones there - the garden is in the same area as the zoo, the children's museum and many other things.  We had to park and hike up the hill to the garden but it was well worth it.  One of the best things was that the autumn colors made it the ideal time to visit.

These balls were inside a building filled with some Japanese needlework.

Val and Carter posed for a picture for Grandma.

The tube on the left poured water into the one on the right until it got fill and dumped out into the bowl.

It was a nice cool day with just a little rain.

While we were in the area, we decided to go over to Pittock Mansion and walk around it.

That place was huge and just behind it, was the view overlooking Portland.

After walking around a little, we drove back to Vancouver to go to the movie.  There was an old theater down town that they had totally refurbished and reopened.  The movie for the weekend was Back to the Future.  It was fun to go into an old single screen theater and watch an old movie.

After filling up with popcorn, we really weren't hungry but I thought we could get some fried zucchini and something to drink at the Black Angus.  It wasn't that great but at least we got done with dinner.

Monday morning, November 7, Val went to work and a little later that morning, I drove to the airport to start my long trip home.  It had been a fun weekend with Valerie - quite different than my normal 24 hour stops.  Next time I'm down, we are going to cook dinner for some of her friends. 

I didn't have a very long layover in Seattle but my trip home was through Anchorage.  When I got there, I found out that the plane to Fairbanks was delayed and I would get home an hour later than expected.  It was almost 9 by the time we landed at FAI and JW was there a little later to take me back home where I belonged.

Another trip "outside" was over and my plan was to settled in up here for the winter and get myself onto some type of schedule.  I sure didn't know at that time, what changes were going to take place within just a couple  of weeks...