Chris

So from May 29 until June 3 our cousin Chris (Monroe—there's a Chris Byrd on my side of the family, too, so just to lessen any confusion) came and stayed with us for his first trip to Oregon. We stayed super, super busy and had a lot of fun...

The day he got here we went out to the gorge (which is the Columbia River Gorge, about 20-30 minutes East of our apartment. The Columbia is the river that separates Oregon from Washington.)

We did a really pretty hike that got us high up in some trees, close to "cliffs," seeing some pretty waterfalls, and back into a little watery cove.











That night we ate dinner with Matt and Kim, and the next day all five of us took a trip to Silver Falls State Park, which is essentially an area with a loop-trail of 10 waterfalls, including three that you walked all the way behind...


(see the people back there?)

Most of the 10 were super impressive, but I think the general consensus was that the second was the majority favorite.





Daniel and Chris also tried to go behind a waterfall that didn't have trail behind it...and got way too high up for comfort. That's us somewhere down there.



Pretty awesome.





Then the next day after church, Daniel, Chris, Nickel and I left to camp at the coast. It was Nickel's first time seeing the beach and I'm pretty sure she's in love. Plus, we even built a camp fire right on the beach (totally legal we came to find out, but I definitely had my doubts) and made s'mores. It was amazing.



















The next morning we headed out on a hike over a cape and saw a great view and sea lions, too. Pretty far off (we had to use binoculars), but still. Awesome.





We saw the gorge waterfalls, too, before Chris left, and had hamburgers with Matt and Kim. Super fun...hopefully all of our guests this summer are as easy as Chris :)

PS Any pictures left are on our newly updated Flickr page...that hopefully we can continually keep updated from now on...