Salem turned out to be exactly as I’d expected it, which isn’t a good or bad thing. While I didn’t make it to the coffee shop in a double decker bus, I did get a pretty grand tour of the city.

My official welcome to Salem is probably a bit too revealing of Ben and I’s sense of humor, so I’ll skip straight to our first stop after I arrived at the Amtrak Station: the Capitol Building!

I got to peek inside the Senate and House of Representative rooms, which were immaculate and pretty majestic feeling.

There was also a tiny but neat collection of local rocks, stones and other things.

Did some thrifting, too. One of the stores had an endless collection of ceramic shoes.

Another store had the cutest little tea cup and a can of Calumet baking powder that is as huge as it is old (I looked inside and it was over half full! Crazy).

We caught Inglourious Basterds at the Northern Lights theater pub for 3 bucks, and preceded the viewing with a visit to Daynight Donuts which bakes their goods not once but twice daily!

A half dozen donuts were just the beginning of my pig-out on food I don’t normally eat. Breakfast alone was epic: eggs, sourdough pancakes, bacon (for the 2nd time in my life), orange juice and home-brewed latte.

Delicious as it all was, I certainly paid for it on that bumpy bus ride home Saturday evening.

There was much to photograph at Ben’s as his Grandpa has all kinds of senior citizen due-dah and old camera gear sprinkled throughout the house. I tried to come up with clever schemes to swipe his Rolleiflex… I mean, he’s 95– he wouldn’t know the real thing from a cardboard box painted black with a pair of Lennon shades glued to the front, would he?

Oh, and of course video games were involved! It was sort of the whole point of my visit. We played Worms: Open Warfare 2 all night till I couldn’t sit up anymore. Then we retired to our adjacent rooms and played from our beds. And when we woke up in the morning? Ben made breakfast and we played more Worms until it was time to grab some lunch and take me back to the Amtrak station.

To call it a good weekend would be an understatement!

Chris and I have been talking for a long time about moving up to Oregon. It feels like half the people we know have already crossed the border to a sales-tax free life, so we’ve finally decided to make the leap, too.

For the last week we’ve been crashing on our friend’s posh, downtown couch while looking for the perfect apartment. This is the view from his 6th floor window at dusk.

The first half of our visit was a roller coaster of emotions. I was a total mess, making regular trips to the tear factory and at one point, even after we’d applied for two places, we were considering not moving at all.

Things settled down once we started treating our time there more like a vacation and less like a cut-throat apartment hunt. We saw lots of friends, explored the neighborhoods of Portland and ate a TON of amazing food.

Renee and Justin took us to the Multnomah County Library, on SW 10th. The children’s section is pretty great. And of course I somehow found myself in an aisle full of computer / blogging literature.

On Friday it felt like the whole city came together for Flicks on the Bricks in Pioneer Square. We lucked out and they were showing one of my all-time favorite movies: Anchorman!

Eventually we were approved for a place in the Northeast, which is the best neighborhood; quiet, friendly and very down to Earth. You can see some snapshots of the apartment on Flickr.

I actually saw the listing on CL before we even left for Portland, exclaiming that I wanted to live there. Ask, and ye shall receive, my friends! :)

The building manager’s office is on Mississippi Blvd, which I’m told is the Northeast’s equivalent of Hawthorne. WAY less packed, though, which I love about it, plus lots of cute, funky shops that I can’t wait to explore.

Mississippi Blvd also has an awesome nursery that has more chickens than I could count running wild.

Our last full day in Portland was spent walking literally miles and miles from downtown to Hawthorne and part of the way back for the annual Street Fair. Lots of fun stuff going on inside stores and on the streets, but mostly it just felt good to walk around and get to know Portland.

Yesterday we drove back to Redding and are making plans to move to Portland on the 1st of September. It’s going to be a long time before I see a “Welcome to California” sign again… I can’t say I’m anywhere near as happy to leave Redding as I’ve always pretended to be. I also can’t say I’m looking forward to driving 8 hours with Felix in a cat carrier. Yikes!

Thanks to some unfortunate planning, my trip to summer school intersected with Chris and I’s wedding anniversary. Oops! Luckily I didn’t have a lot on my plate at the time, so we took the weekend off and visited family in Cotati.

Since I was in Arcata, we went down the Redwood Highway, which is as beautiful as it is long and winding.

It only gets prettier once you start nearing Sonoma County.

We stayed with Chris’s sister, Lindy, and her new husband Danny! Not to imply that there was an old one, heh.

Blog post coming soon on their wedding, but you can also check out my portfolio for a gallery that sums it up nicely.

We ate lots of food, most of it Mexican. I took these shots in the ‘hub’ of Cotati.

Our second day we made a little trip to San Rafael, which I learned I’ve been pronouncing wrong my entire life. It’s “San Ruh-fell,” not “San Ra-fie-ell.”

Anyway, there was an awesome sidewalk painting festival going on when we got there.

And when we got hungry, Lindy brought us to Sol Food. Pardon the all caps, but it’s really necessary when I say that THIS PLACE IS AMAZING. I had the small Vegetariano Combinacione, with maduros.

Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks this place rocks, as it’s so packed that the waitress takes your order while you stand in line, waiting to get inside.

The rest of the trip was pretty mellow after that explosion of Puerto Rican goodness. We drove back to Cotati, where I watched Spinal Tap for the first time ever, and then enjoyed another long drive back to Arcata.

Last weekend Chris treated the family to a baseball game in San Francisco. I’ve never been one for baseball– I prefer basketball as it’s more exciting– but I still had a lot of fun! The Giants put up a good fight against the Mets (but inevitably lost) and we stuffed our faces silly with veggie dogs, garlic fries and cinnamon almonds.

The next day we went and saw Star Trek in Sacramento, which was amazamazing. Seriously, if you love Sci-Fi, go see it now! I was a bit skeptical given the fact that Sylar from Heroes was cast as Spock, but he did a wonderful job. Is it possible that he’s a good actor trapped in a [really really] bad show? Hmmm…

What did you all do for the weekend? Hope it was a good one!

Here are some more photos I shot during our quick drive over to Red Bluff and back, the above shots being of my mom’s back yard.

I forgot how amazing it is to be surrounded by mountains in almost every direction, though I definitely didn’t miss all the yellow and dead vegetation…

I’m also experiencing a bit of sickness due to the change in air quality; even though I grew up here, it’s much drier than I’m used to these days, and I’ve been waking up with sore nostrils! Yeowch.

They may only be 3 hours apart, but Shasta and Tehama County are worlds apart from Humboldt!