The. Coolest. Museum. Ever.

Well, besides The Met.  But for kids, The OMSI is definitely the best we've ever seen.   It was actually fun for kids and adults alike.  They had a huge exhibit on Einstein and I really learned alot, and of course, the kids loved it.  Every ten feet there was another interactive exhibit or activity to keep them entertained and learning.

 


Really, the pictures don't do it justice.  And as always, of course I have like 100 pictures of the place, but you'll just have to trust me.  If you are ever in Portland, or anywhere close, you should go there.  It's worth it.  And while you're in Portland, you should visit The Deli Barn (2410 SE 182nd Ave), which is owned by our hosts for the day, Grandma Barbie and Grandpa Bob.  Yummy food, made fresh while you wait.  You can also play the lottery and Keno, if you're into that kind of thing. :)

 

And we also had dinner at the yummiest Seafood place ever - Salty's, right on the Wallamette River.  Great food, awesome view.  And I was so proud of my boys for being so good in such a fancy restaurant. 

Thank you Grandma Barbie and Bob for such a wonderful day! We are so spoiled! And so lucky to have you!

Skamania Day 5 - The last FULL day

I know, it's getting old, this whole Skamania thing, but I can't start posting about our vacation day by day and then not finish.  But I did really struggle with the title, because my brother informed me that everytime he saw one of these postings, he read it as Ska (as in the type of music) -mania (as in some sort of craziness) and originally he's thinking "wow, I didn't know they were into that".  So now everytime I think of Skamania, that's what I think too.  Oh well.  Onto our day...

We started the morning by playing around the outside of the hotel. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and from the back of our hotel, there was an awesome view of the gorge.

playing "rock band" in the ampitheatre behind the hotel (there was a beautiful wedding there the night before)

Then it was off to hike one of the trails that head out from the lodge.  We chose the "Creek Loop Trail", because it had lots of bridges, we got to pass a couple cool little lagoons, and it weaved in and out of the gorgeous golf course.

 And all along the way we got to eat lots and lots of berries!

 The boys' other favorite part was hunting for golf balls...

Then we headed up the gorge and found a yummy place to eat lunch.  Looks cheesy, but they had THE best cinnamon roll french toast EVER.

We spent the afternoon at the Columbia River Gorge Discovery Center. We learned all about Lewis and Clark; how the gorge was formed; how the early settlers made it through and lots of other interesting things.  It was really quite fun.  They had a whole room just for kids to play - dig for fossils, dress up, make crafts.  It was great!

Hooray for our fun day!  Now back to the hotel for some swimming!  (Of course.)

Equation for the perfect vacation

Dirt + Dinosaurs + Swimming = 3 happy little Jensen boys

Spring Break 2010 - Price, UT

Anyone outside of Utah is saying where in the world is "Price, Utah" and anyone in Utah is saying why in the heck would you go to Price for vacation.  So let me just tell you (and yes, we had an awesome time).  One, it is a very short drive (hour and a half).  Two, it was cheap and we had no problem booking a motel just a couple days before.  And three, we really just wanted to go play in the desert.  So here's how our awesome vacation became such.

Day one:  We left around naptime so everyone could sleep on the way.  Unfortunately for me, the driver, the was a serious snowstorm as we went over Soldier Summit (and I was thinking, "this is going to be a very cold day of hiking tomorrow).  But we made it.  Our first stop was the CEU Prehistoric Museum.  It had all kinds of stuff about the native peoples of Utah and then of course, lots of stuff about dinosaurs.  It was just the right size for my boys' attention span and we were just about the only ones there, so they could run around and look at whatever they wanted. 

They also had this whole hands-on kids area, which once again was quite nice as we were the only ones there.

Then we went and checked into our sweet hotel. All that was required was indoor swimming pool and free breakfast, but we lucked out and it was actually clean with fairly large rooms.  After a yummy mexican dinner, we spent the rest of the night playing in the pool and the hot tub - all. by. our. selves.   Yes, it was perfect.

The next day we headed out for our adventure in Nine Mile Canyon, which is actually more like 40 or 50 miles, so if you go - be aware.  Luckily we picked up a handy pamphlet at the museum so we were prepared and we already on the look out for all the cool sites.  And we were not disappointed, it was the perfect playground for three four adventurous boys.  (And I had a little fun too.)   We did lots of . . .

HIKING:

(click on the picture collage to see it better)

CLIMBING:

and finding cool caves and places to hide:

But what we really went there to see was this:

And they were everywhere!  Supposedly the writings in this canyon spanned thousands of years.  It was really fun to stop at different sites and to spot them along the road as we drove.  The boys had fun trying to figure out what they were or what they meant.  Corbin loved reading the pamphlet and telling us what to look for and where everything was.  It was a REALLY fun day!

That night we had to cool off in the pool again, and believe it or not, little old Price, UT has a huge wave pool that's open year round!  Too bad we got there right after they had shut the waves off for the night.  But it was still fun and there was hardly anyone there - more fun for us!

The next day, after eating our free breakfast, we packed up and went to check out this cool park before venturing on.  It was worth it!  It was really fun.  Definitely the best little playground we've been to.

The Dino-Mine Adventure Park:

On our way home we decided to check out "Historic Helper" since we'd driven by the town at least a hundred times over the years on our way to and from Denver.  It was quaint.  We went to a yummy, inexpensive little restaurant called Balance Rock Cafe, which was also a combination art gallery and antique shop.  It got it's name from this little oddity we had seen in Nine Mile Canyon:

After that, we ventured through the Helper Mining and Railroad Museum.  Corbin really liked it and wanted to read about everything, the other boys acted like you would expect little boys to in a museum - like wild indians.  There was quite a few cool things and we did learn alot.  And it was free (but we donated a little) so that's always worth it.

Outside they had all this old mining equipment.  We thought that was fun.  Unfortunately we didn't see the sign that said "Stay off the equipment" until we were leaving. oops.

So despite the looks I get when I tell people we went to Price for Spring Break, we had an awesome time and I would highly recommend it.