Portland: The Highs & Lows

Since I've given an overview of the trip and highlighted some of our favorite parts, I thought I'd give a thumbs up-thumbs down report of Portland plus a few travel tips in case you want to visit:

Positives:

• Beautiful weather--the weather was GORGEOUS the entire time we were there. It wasn't too hot and it wasn't too cold. It was sunny and lovely every day. It is a good idea to wear layers because you can go from slightly cool in the morning to nice and warm in the afternoon. We both had backpacks which were great because we could toss our long sleeves in them as the day warmed up.
  
• Great public transportation & easy accessibility--the TriMet rocks. You can go so many places. One thing you may want to consider is whether or not to actually buy a pass. We didn't realize that many of the routes are free, and even if they aren't, no one checks your ticket. We never once showed our $22.50 a piece week passes that purchased. We felt good about supporting public transport, but it was still a bummer that we didn't really get our money's worth for the passes.
  
• Lots of things to do--We hit the highlights and as you can tell we were pretty busy! 4 full days was perfect to get the highlights. If we wanted to get "more local" then we may have to stay longer. Any shorter and we would have felt jipped.
• Beautiful Town--whether we were in the heart of downtown or driving around the state, the entire place was beautiful. Great architecture, very clean, etc. Visually you will be satisfied!
  

Negatives:

• Bad food, hard to find good food--One of the things we were MOST excited about was all the good food Portland supposedly has. We read several blogs and articles raving about the emphasis on local, organic, good-for-you food. Well wherever it was, we didn't find it. Most of our meals were disappointing. We really wanted to try and find some good restaurants, but we usually just ended up in the first thing we could find after walking and walking for 20-30 minutes. If you are really intent on good food, I would take really good notes of places you want to go and making sure you have good directions on how to get there. We tried to find a few places and got hopelessly lost, but weren't really intent on going any particular place so that probably contributed to why we got crap food the whole time.
  
• Lots of bums--There are tons of homeless, jobless young people. It's one thing to be homeless because you have really hit bad luck, or you have mental issues or substance abuse issues, but the majority of the homeless in Portland are 20-30 somethings. People who are perfectly capable of being productive. They looked like they just wanted to hang out with their friends, smoking cloves and playing guitar. You can't walk a block without being hit up for money. It got old really fast. Even worse was the number of homeless that had pets. I really wanted to punch them in the head. It's one thing to make the choice to be homeless, it is completely another to make a dog live like that. There were many dogs eating leftovers passed on as donations. I'm sure they don't receive proper vet care and they have to sleep outside on a leash 24-7. Of course you know I love animals so that really got to me. Practice your walk and ignore before you go. You'll need it.
  

Overall, even though the food wasn't what we expected and we were harassed a lot by bums, we give Portland a double-thumbs up. We'd definitely go back to visit, and it's now on our list of top places to check out when I'm looking for a job!

Portland's Saturday Market

Ange did the most research before we headed to Portland. Actually, I really didn't do any. Ange sent me some links but between Africa, work and Mercy Foundation activities I was just too busy to do much looking. Ange heard about the Portland Saturday Market and since we are on a major Farmer's Market kick we wanted to check out Portland's Market, which is pretty well known.

It was the first thing we did in Portland after checking into our hotel. The one word I would use to describe it is overwhelming. It is HUGE. There are probably 200 vendors selling a range of things from clothes, food, house items, art and other random things. We wandered around for a couple hours, snacking on various goodies, looking at the booths and buying Ange a snazzy "Local Tastes Better" veggie shirt.

Although we were overwhelmed by the size and activity of the market, I think it is definitely something you should check out if you are in town. It's open both Saturday and Sunday so there is plenty of time to check it out. The food was slightly disappointing. It wasn't terrible, but definitely wasn't that great. The best thing we had was an elephant ear! We thought that was pretty funny being from the land o' fried food. It was a great experience and if you are looking for some cool shopping you'll be all set.

On The Road: Columbia River Gorge, Mount St. Helens, Astoria & Seaside

Our third day in Portland we decided to rent a car and explore the Pacific Northwest. We had looked on a map and saw that Mount St. Helens was only about an hour and a half away and neither one of us had ever seen a volcano so we thought we should take the opportunity to explore it! We also wanted to visit some of the very pretty and well-known waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge and of course, how could we be near the Pacific and not visit the beach? So we checked out Google maps and mapped out a reasonable schedule to hit all three places.

We woke up bright and shiny early, got our showers, packed our bags for the day with plenty of supplies (towels, hiking shoes, flip flops, light jackets, etc.) and walked our two short blocks to Hertz to pick up our sporty car.

Our first stop was the Columbia River Gorge. It was so gorgeous! We first hiked/walked on a paved path around Wahkeena Falls. They were lovely and since it was early we avoided most of the crowds. The paths were paved and not too steep so it would be a good "hike" for just about anyone.

After that we hit Multnomah Falls which is the tallest waterfall in Oregon. It's was much more touristy than Wahkeena which wasn't the greatest, but the falls were awesome so that was a good trade off. It also had a very easy walking path so it would be a good place for non-serious hikers to explore. Below is just one of the shots from Multnomah.

After the Falls we set our GPS to Mount St. Helens and were off! We realized that Portland is much closer to the Washington-Oregon state line than we thought. We drove and drove and finally got to the Mount St. Helen's Visitor's Center. That's when we realized that the actual volcano is an additional hour and a half from the Visitor's Center. Oops. Well we had already made great time that day and thought it would be a waste if we came all that way and didn't see the volcano so we journeyed on. And we had the rental all night so who cared if we got back late?

There were lots of really cool little pull off places along the road to the summit so we got to see the volcano from a ton of viewpoints. Here's a shot of our cute little car at one of the stops.

The closer we got to the volcano the more excited we got! It was cool to see all the lava flow areas, and the way that 30 years later, nothing is still growing in the lava path. Here's a nice shot of my cutie with the mountain in the background.

Washington has done a great job of repopulating the area with wildlife and flora. They have a great sustainable forestry program and all the way up the drive there are little signs with what kind of trees are there, when they were planted, etc. Of course we couldn't get any really good shots of them because either there was no place to pull off or the trees were blocking good shots of the signs. We got this quick shot just to remind us of it.

When we finally got to the top of the mountain, we found out that we were supposed to pay $8 each to go to the observation platform. Well we had already seen the mountain from a billion angles and since we're cheap we decided to skip the platform and snuck our way just to the lower observation deck to take a quick shot. If you were going to spend more time there it would be worth it to hear info from the rangers and possibly hike around the mountain, but since we were just there to take a quick looksee we didn't want to expend $16. We high-tailed it out of there and drove back down the mountainside.

We stopped at the bottom of the mountain right before the highway to check out some souvenirs and grab a quick bite to eat. We chatted up the locals and decided that we'd drive along the river through Astoria and end in Seaside.

Our excitement was building since we are both fanatical ocean lovers. We made an impromptu stop in Astoria when we caught our first glimpse of ocean! We hopped out of the car amidst many Kindergarten Cop jokes and lifted our noses up to smell the sea air. Here's Ange soaking it all up.

We spent about 20 minutes in Astoria, although there are some cute little hotels and the town looked like it could be a nice overnight stop for tourists, and jumped in the car and pointed ourselves to the beach!

We finally got to Seaside around 6. We jumped out of the car and skipped our way down to the beach. We were sooooo excited! It was our first time to a beach together and we soaked up the love and happiness together. Here is the shot of us entering the Pacific Ocean together for the first time. It was FREEZING! I'd guess the water was around 65 degrees. Really, really cold.

There were lots of people on the beach, including lots of people with dogs. Of course we loved that being the crazy dog ladies we are. We even saw a German Shepard that looked like our little Stoney-boy!

There were some stoners that joined us on the beach. We knew they were stoners because A. we saw them smoking a joint when they were out in the water (see pic below) and B. no one but a stoner would have went out to their chests in that water if they weren't stoned. Seriously, I was a little fearful that they were going to get hypothermia and die.

We had so much fun walking around in the ocean and digging around in the sand. We just enjoyed ourselves and loved being in love at the beach! Ange was splashing around a bit and I snapped a quick one of her.

We decided to wait out the sunset because neither one of us had ever really watched a sunset on the beach, and for sure not with each other! It was awesome. Our last lovey-dovey shot at the beach below.

We headed out to dinner, which sadly, was the only disappointing part of the day. We happened to pick the crappiest seafood restaurant in the entire town. Oh well, the rest of the day was great so we just focused on that. We drove back through the longest, darkest mountain path ever. Finally got back to Hertz at 11:45. Walked back to the hotel and crashed into bed. Good times :)

Oregon Zoo

As you know Ange & I are crazy animal lovers, so naturally we couldn't visit Portland without going to the Oregon Zoo! The majority of our trip was unplanned because we wanted to really go on vacation and not be tied to anything, so when we found ourselves with nothing to do on Sunday afternoon we thought the zoo would be a perfect excursion! We mapped out our train route and hit the rails!

The zoo was really easy to get to as there is a TriMet stop at the zoo entrance. Like I mentioned previously, we actually forgot our passes in the room, but the TriMet is different from any other mass transit system I've been on in that you don't really ever show your pass to anyone. You don't have to scan it to get through any turnstiles, you just jump on! So that is how we managed to not have our pass. You get a discount (small, but hey, anything helps!) and luckily the zoo man was nice and let us in with the discount anyway.

We walked through the entirety of the zoo stopping and taking some pics here and there. Ange took lots of animal pics which you can see on her blog, but I mostly like to take funny pictures so here are some of my gems.

This is Ange posing next to a sign talking about Small Fry...because she is a small fry.

Next we decided to ride some ponies in the petting zoo barn. Ange had a hard time with her steed, but I think she finally was able to get it under control.

Next we visited the Primate Center. Monkeys & apes are always so hilarious to me. The orangutans were so cute. They had a sheet with a whole cut in it. When we first got there, one was sitting underneath it and hiding. Sadly there were way too many people oohing and ahhing so I couldn't get a pic. It finally ditched the sheet and immediately the other one came over put it over his head and was walking around like a little ghost. We were cracking up. Here is the ghost climbing the tree.

When we were leaving the Primate Center we noticed some people looking over the railing to this one corner. We peeked around and saw this goofy chimp all laid out on the concrete enjoying the sun. It looked like he had fallen off the wall and was all sprawled out but we watched him long enough to know he was just sunbathing. Totally no care in the world.


Next we stopped at the Bat House which is pretty much the most disgusting place I've ever been. There were hundreds of bats just hanging upside down and bat poop all over the bottom of their exhibit. I just wanted to barf all over the place. Caught this gem of a photo showing a giant pair of testicles on one of the disgusting creatures. Serious kahones.


Finally, what would the zoo be without a little love? Luckily there were lots of nice people around willing to take pics of people so we got a cute snap in.


The zoo overall was pretty fantastic! It didn't have anything really that I haven't seen before, and it isn't huge by any means (about the same size as the Indy Zoo), but the layout and synchronicity with nature was really nice. They have made great pains to integrate it with the surrounding woods and landscape so that was cool to see. It was also very eco-friendly, which is no surprise since all of Portland seems very eco-friendly. A+!

Voodoo Doughnuts

I mentioned in the mega-blog about Portland that Ange had heard about this nifty little doughnut shop called Voodoo Doughnuts. She can't remember if she heard it on the Travel Channel or on the Food Network, but just knew that they served some really tasty doughnuts and wanted to try them out!

Sidenote: sadly, I don't have any pictures of VD. We bought a new camera for Ange right before we went because her old camera suffered a tragic death during a lame-o driveway party in Noblesville. She was very sad and mopey about it so we decided to get a new one before we left so she could be snapping away. The other advantage is that my camera, while awesome, is rather bulky. We got her a kicky little CoolPix in a sweet purple color. She actually wanted a blue one, but they were out and we didn't have time to wait for a special order. We got a good deal on it at Best Buy and I found a cool little hip carrying case for easy access. So on many of our excursions we just used her camera rather than worrying about mine. Ange did a really nice blog about Portland including a huge excerpt about VD with lots of pictures, you can check it out on her blog.

So VD is known for having crazy doughnut combos like Captain My Captain (doughnut with Captain Crunch on the top), Butter Fingering (Devils food, vanilla, and crushed Butterfinger), Dirty Snowball (chocolate cake doughnut covered with pink marshmallow glaze and surprise filling), etc. However, they are most famous for their Maple Bacon bar, which is exactly as it sounds. A maple glazed doughnut with two slices of bacon on top. I know, as my sister Leslie said "SICK!" but Ange swears it's like a little slice of heaven. Being a vego I cannot vouch for her. But I can say that I tried a plain maple doughnut and it was delicious. And so was the old fashion chocolate, the old fashion blueberry, the Butterfingering, and the No Name. We went to VD twice and took home extras for snacks. What can I say? They were GOOD!

In addition to yummy doughnuts, they also have a cool vibe going on. It is a very alternative/hipster place. Lots of tattooed people and funky clothes. Definitely up our alley anyway.

The only thing you need to be prepared for is long lines at times. We went on Sunday mid-morning and we ran into the brunch crowd and waited about 45 minutes for doughnuts. I know not everyone has the patience we do so if you don't, you may want to try and hit some off times. We drove by on Monday morning on our way to exploring around 9 am and there wasn't any line at all. We went on Tuesday evening around 8:30 pm and we waited maybe 15 minutes. So definitely scope it out if you aren't in it to win it ;)

Bottom Line: I would definitely hit Voodoo Doughnuts if you are in the Portland Area!

Found this blog post about VooDoo Doughnuts...written by a guy who has a blog just about doughnuts. It gives you all the info you might want to know about the doughnuts, so if you are serious about your eatin', check it out.

Portland: The Overview

Of course I have a ton of stuff to say about our trip, so I’m going to try and break it up into more manageable pieces. Just as a FYI, this overview will talk about the beginning of the trip in detail and then go through the highlights of our days. I’ll then talk about different activities in detail in subsequent blogs and then give a travel do’s and don’ts at the end.

We stayed up really late on Friday night. We had some laundry to do as well as some last minute packing, and since it was Ange’s first flight in about 3 years she was bouncing off the walls with excitement. I was excited too of course, because I love vacations and this was our first “big” vacation together, but words cannot really do justice to the level of excitement Ange was feeling. Sally Sensitive is not only about crying at Hallmark commercials, but sensitive to anything that could be a major emotion. It’s actually very cute, and kind of makes it more exciting for me. I’ve done so much traveling over the past few years that it’s hard to remember when travel was a big deal. So it’s almost like a renewed zest for travel.

We collapsed into bed probably around 2 am. We were getting up at 6:30 am. Yikes. This is pretty normal for me though. I seem to always stay up way too late before a big flight, but in the end it works out because I usually sleep the entire flight. Usually. We’ll get back to that one.

We rolled out of bed very sleepy but very excited. We got our showers and I gave my dear little sister a call to make sure she was awake. Hilary is not a morning person and she’s been known to shut the alarm clock off and fall back asleep. I had planned to call her at 7:20 and then at 7:25 to make sure she was still awake! But to my surprise when Ange called her (I was drying my hair) she was getting ready to walk out the door! Way to go Hil! She must be practicing for her new life as a vet student at MSU :).

We finished throwing all of our last minute stuff in our bags and Hilary arrived to help us throw it in her car. We kissed the dogs goodbye and were off to the airport! We arrived at the Delta counter to realize that my Silver Elite status had expired and we had to pay $15 for each of our bags. The indignity! We quickly breezed through check in and security and were on our way to the terminal. I could tell Ange was nervous and excited, and she had already warned me that she may cry, so when I looked over at her to say something about a Starbucks stop I wasn’t too surprised to see her choking back some tears. I wasn’t sure what I should do, but she couldn’t talk at the moment so I just steered us to Starbucks so she could have her moment. She recovered quickly, we got our coffees and then we sat down and waited to board.

We boarded the plane and got ready for take-off. I thought Ange may just pass out from excitement, but she made it. Our flight to Minneapolis was uneventful and we arrived on time. Sadly, I did NOT get to nap on the plane because someone was too excited and talked my ear off the entire way. But, again, it was cute so I wasn't too upset. We got a quick bite to eat and waited for our flight to Portland. Again, the flight was uneventful, but we did get to see some awesome views as we flew into the city. Living in Indiana you can forget how beautiful mountains and lots of trees can be. Not to say that our lovely farmland isn’t pretty, but when you see it all the time it’s not that spectacular.

We were so excited to land and start exploring! We got off the plane, grabbed our luggage and made our way to the TriMet. When we were thinking about places to go, public transportation was high on our list. In addition to trying to live as green as possible, we also wanted to travel as economically as possible, so public transport was a big deal for us. My family thought that it was funny that we were randomly going to Portland, OR and that one of our main reasons for doing so was that they had a really great public transportation system, but in addition to the above reasons, it turned out to be just plain handy. More about that later.

We grabbed out 1-week unlimited fare cards and headed out to the light rail tracks to take the 40 minute ride to downtown Portland. The ride was great; very comfortable, efficient and gave us a good riding tour of part of the city. We made sure to grab a fare map so we could see the routes that we may want to take during our trip.

We arrived at Pioneer Square North and jumped off the train. We knew we needed to walk 0.10 miles North but we weren’t quite sure where we needed to point ourselves. Luckily Portland has police and safety officers all over. It’s part of their “Keep Portland Clean & Safe” campaign so there was a safety man standing right near the train that was able to point us in the right direction. We walked 3 or 4 short blocks and arrived at the Marriott. I thought we were staying at a Courtyard but this was the address we had. We went in to try and check in. Turns out we really were staying at the Courtyard which was a few more blocks away and the less than friendly receptionist was quick to let us know that “Unfortunately, you’ve arrived at the wrong property.” So we took our low class selves out the door and headed to our lesser property…which turned out to be way better than the Marriott we went to anyway! Our unfortunate property (which is what we called it the whole rest of the trip) was very contemporary and a lot lower key than the stuffy one we first arrived at. We were thrilled. We quickly checked in and made our way up to our room. The room was small but nice, way to go Priceline! We dumped our stuff, jumped on the bed, and then headed back out to explore.

Portland has a huge outdoor market that they call “The Saturday Market” even though it goes on both Saturday and Sunday. We rode the train to the market and spent a few hours exploring the booths, the food and catching the general atmosphere. It was large and semi-overwhelming so we thought we’d head back to the hotel for a little rest and then we’d figure out where we’d go that evening for dinner and anything else we wanted to do.

After sinking in to our comfy King size bed we thought a quick little nap was in order. We hadn’t gotten much sleep on the plane so we were a little tired. Plus there was a 3 hour time difference so that just added to our exhaustion. We ended up passing out cold for about 4 hours and woke up around 10pm. We decided it was too late to go out so we called the front desk and got a good recommendation for a local pizza place and ordered in. Hammy’s pizza arrived about an hour later and it was delicious! We stayed up for about another hour mapping out the next day’s activities and watching CNN. We crashed again around 12:30. The night was interrupted about 4:30 am when Hammy's decided that we had ordered another pizza. The guy really, really wanted to deliver it to us, even though I clearly had stumbled out of bed bleary-eyed and swore that I was not Nick someone or other. Then we went back to sleep until around 8:30am.

We were eager to make up for the little bit of lost time we had the previous night so we quickly showered and were off to the races! We walked to the TriMet and headed to Chinatown. We wandered around and realized that Portland was a late starting city and nothing was really open in Chinatown and decided to come back later. We headed to Voodoo Donuts to try out their insane donut combos. Ange had heard about VD originally on FoodNetwork or the Travel Channel and was determined to try a Maple Bacon Bar. We got there and there was already a long line. 45 minutes later we walked away with a large sampling of delicious donuts. We paused to eat 2 each and saved the others for later.

As we walked away from VD we realized our hotel was really close to Chinatown, and that the TriMet was completely unnecessary. We basically took a long loop around to walk about 3 blocks. Oops. So we headed back and stopped at the Indian Festival in Pioneer Square. We hung out there for a bit, watched some dancing, sampled some food and then headed back to hotel to re-group.

We looked at our options and decided to go to the zoo! We took the TriMet over to the zoo and realized that we actually forgot our tickets. Oops. No one checks for them anyway. We were sad that we couldn't get a discount for showing our TriMet tickets, but the man was really nice and gave us the discount anyway. We spent several hours at the zoo and saw all the exhibits. Our combo ticket gave us a ride on the train to Washington Park. We saw the Rose Garden & looked at the enterance to the Japanese Garden, but realized that we had only an hour until the last train and the zoo closing and didn't think it was justified to pay $8 for less than an hour so we skipped out on that.

We returned to hotel to relax, scheduled a rental car for Monday, watched a little AFV, and got ready for dinner. We thought we'd be able to find something to eat rather easily, but sadly we wandered aimlessly for 45 minutes and then finally ended up at a Greek restaurant that we'd seen earlier in the day. As we ate in the open air tables some weirdo came up and gave us a private "Indian dance" and when we didn't pay attention to us he called us "Fucking Greeks!" Momentary amusement. We went back to the hotel and did a photo shoot since we got all dressed up and really didn't go anywhere. This is why we're perfect for each other.

We had an adventurous day planned for Monday and had planned to get up at 7:30, but apparently I was excited so I woke up an hour earlier and tried to bother Ange until she finally decided to get up at 7:30. We got up, packed stuff, waited forever for towels and then finally got ready after they arrived. We conveniently walked the 3 blocks to the rental place for Hertz. We were given a smart little Toyota Corrola with GPS and we were on our way!

We first drove to Columbia River Gorge, of course making lots of Gorges jokes. "You're so Gorges!" "No, you are the most Gorges!" Ah, good times. We arrived first at Wahkeena Falls, and decided to hike all around them. Then we headed up the road to Multnomah Falls and hiked around a bit. Got some coffee and a snack and headed back on the road to Washington State, which surprisingly, is not far from Portland. It took us about 30 mintues to get to the Falls and then another 45 or so to get to Washington, half of which was back-tracking.

We finally reached the Mount St. Helens "area" after about an hour and 15 minutes of driving. We then realized the Mountain was a lot farther than we thought. We had only made it to the visitor's center at that point. Decided it would be dumb to leave without seeing the Mountain so we took the extra 70-some minutes to drive to the Mountain, making lots of scenic stops along the way. Stopped at one overlook and got a nice little overview from a volunteer guide who was super nice. She lent us her binoculors to see some Elk, but sadly I didn't see any Elk because secretly I'm not good at using them and can't really ever find anything through them. Ange saw them though. Saw lots of "Happy Trees" on the drive. Finally got to the actual Mountain viewing area and decided that we didn't want to pay $8 each to see a slightly better view of what we'd been seeing for the past hour and a half. So we sneaked in free to platform, but I got scared because I didn't want to get caught by the scary rangers, and after a few minutes we ran away.

We drove back down the mountain area, fighting our way through slow heads who aren't good mountain drivers like me. Stopped to eat before we both died. Decided to drive to Seaside which is on the coast. Made a quickie stop in Astoria, which is where Kindergarten Cop was filmed & based. Tried to crack some jokes but Ange was too obsessed with the water so I texted them to my sister instead. Got back on the road and finally arrived in Seaside. We spent a couple hours on the beach in Seaside, watched some Stoners get high and try to swim in the freezing water, saw lots of dogs, watched the sunset, found a boomerang, took it as an omen that we were meant to return, went to crappy ass dinner at Dooger's and were very disappointed. Drove back to Portland, forgot to check the gas gauge and almost ran out of gas, but likely we got to the station just in time. Finally got back to Portland, returned the rental car and went back to hotel to wash sand out of all our cracks, and collapsed into bed.

Tuesday morning we woke up and puttered around the hotel for a bit and then decided to do some more walking around. We walked over to Chinatown again, still were not too impressed, walked to the Pearl District, not much to see, but pretty. Finally decided to grab an early lunch and found a little Mexican place called Santeria, or "Abierto" as Ange first thought. Had some yummy burritos. Decided to go next door to buy some lottery tickets and see if we could end the vacation with a bang (we didn't win, boo). Walked over to the Waterfront Park to enjoy a nice view. Hung out for a bit and then decided to go find the street car and take a little ride. Sadly, the street car wasn't like a trolley and was just a light rail train. Skipped the ride and poked around in Finnegan's Toy Store. Went to get some coffee and decide what we wanted to do next. Decided to go see a movie, but first we went back to take a nap at the hotel. Watched some funny falling down and animal videos on YouTube first. Took a short nap, got up, went and saw Adam. Went for a yummy dinner at Pastini. Walked back to the hotel. Decided we couldn't leave Portland without visiting Voodoo Donuts one last time. Got a snack for the night and donuts for breakfast. Walked back to the hotel and went to bed.

Wednesday we got up early, packed our stuff, checked out of the hotel and walked to the TriMet. Got to the airport, checked in where the lady said "Uhhh, Linda and Angel?" and of course we called each other that for the rest of the day, went through security, ate our Voodoo Donuts, boarded the plane, flew to Salt Lake City, realized SLC airport blows, hung out a bit, ate some gross food, boarded our plane for home, flew through major turbulence, arrived home safely, called Hilary to pick us up, went home and loved on dogs. The end.

Ok, not totally the end, but for now. More later.