Rose City Roving

Portland is justifiably known as the "Rose City."

We were lucky enough to be in Portland for (a) a beautiful sunny Sunday, (b) Father's Day, and (c) the annual Portland Rose Festival, all totally unplanned. We were happy to be able to celebrate Miguel's first Father's day with him!

Miguel, Aurelia and Sylvia took us to the Rose Test Garden high in the hills over Portland. The roses were stunning and overwhelming in variety and quantity - and besides that, they smelled good!

Sylvia was enchanting, quietly enjoying her day out in the park cuddled close to Mom and taking all the sights and smells in.

The views of the city below were incredible.

As Miguel commented, millions of digital images must have been taken there that day. I accounted for about 100 of those!

Interrupted Travel

Traveling to PDX to see Sylvia, the newest Rose of Portland, proved to be a challenge.... but well worthwhile! Our flight out of Boston was delayed (slugabed Louise moaning all the way to the airport at 4 am only to find out the flight was late!) causing us to miss our connecting flight in Cincinnati (an airport Louise knows all too intimately.)

A simple one stop journey became a two stop journey with plenty of quality time spent in various airports across the country - our new itinerary added a stop (and a few hours) in Salt Lake City. On the plus side? Since it was the airline's fault, we were upgraded to first class (for the first and probably only times in our lives!) from Cincinnati to Salt Lake City. Oh, those plush, roomy leather seats, free food, drink and movies, and absolutely stunning views out the window. In addition, we were given a food voucher for the quality time we were spending in CVG. On the minus side, those lost eight hours with Sylvia were priceless! Not to mention Jim's dismay when spending the food voucher yielded - see through coffee! Quelle horreur!

Salt Lake City was pretty amazing looking from the air, and also from the airport. We took one of these dinky SkyWest commuter planes on to Portland. Again, the views were stunning but they forgot to take the mini-plane through the car wash before the flight so the window was a tad dirty.

Finally, we arrived in PDX and thanks to Tom Tom the Second we were rewarded with our first meeting with Sylvia! Here's one happy gPop!