Day 44 -- Moritz arrives!

Day 44 – July 8:  Today Moritz arrived from Germany.  He had a long flight over from Hannover to Amsterdam to Portland, but he did arrive in one piece.  I’m still amazed that his program would only allow him to bring one suitcase for the entire year.  I couldn’t pack like that!  He said that he was tired because he couldn’t sleep on the plane, but he was excited to be here.  We took him to lunch at Shari’s (again so David could have another piece of pie).  Moritz tried the chicken and waffles (which had an interesting combination of country gravy and maple syrup as sauces) and he said that it was quite good.  He polished off everything on his plate and then was happy to try some pie along with David.  This time David got the Northwest berry trio (marionberries, blueberries, and raspberries) and Moritz tried the marionberry pie since we said that marionberries were unique to Oregon (they are from Marion county where Salem is). 

After finishing lunch we started to drive to Union, OR.  We decided to take historic highway 30 along the waterfall route, rather than drive the freeway, so we could stop and see some of the waterfalls that you can’t get to from the freeway.  First stop we made was at Vista House on Crown Point which is on top of the ridge overlooking the Columbia River Gorge.  So we got to see how beautiful the gorge is.  Then we came down and stopped at Sheppard Glen where the water was tumbling down in an almost waterfall (closer to a water ride at a water park).  It was really pretty!  Then we stopped at Bridal Veil falls and hiked down to the bottom of it and then back up.  I think tired out Moritz because after that he started to doze off.  Once we passed Horsetail Falls and Multnomah Falls, he fell asleep in the car.  He slept the rest of the way up the gorge and missed seeing the temperature creep up.  Around The Dalles, OR it was 109 degrees. 

We haven’t quite made it to Union (we still have 155 miles), but I expect everything else to go smoothly.  Tomorrow morning we will head back up to Cornucopia and see if Daniel survived his 6 hour horse ride while we were gone (he was going to go up on Saturday to help Mark with the customers because Mark’s back was giving him trouble because he got bucked off his horse a few weeks ago). 

Note at 10:30 pm:  We did get to Union later that night after eating Chinese food in La Grande.  Prissy (the cat) is very attention-starved and so happy to see people.  Joey (the dog) also seems happy to see people.  We also started some laundry here, but plan to leave fairly early in the morning to get back up to the lodge.  Moritz is dead asleep -- he is very tired.