back home

13 August 2004 - 18 August 2004

          So, my dad took a promotion to move to Newport, Oregon...a tiny little touristy town on the Left Coast.  Having been there since November, I figured I'd jet up for a week to see him.  For company, my friend of 11 years, Emery Zachry, tagged along.  Newport's a neat little town where everyone either works at a paper mill (huge timber industry, good for my Dad's chemical/water treatment business), or they're in the commercial fishing trade.  No one has air conditioning because it rarely gets above 80 degrees in the middle of summer.  And...I didn't exactly pack well...so while I had 10 different tee-shirts, I only had 2 long sleeve shirts and a couple of fleece pullovers for the nighttime...so it looks like all these pics were all in two days b/c I'm always in a blue oxford.  Yikes.  

     So...what'd we do?  Well...we went on a whale watching expedition for a few hours out in the Pacific, toured the Oregon State University Aquarium, toured several lighthouses, the Old Dutchman winery, saw some beaches, drove on the beaches (in Lincoln City, just a few miles North of Newport where Brad Pitt and Jenn Anniston have a house...FYI), played in tide pools, saw the famous Spruce Goose (Howard Hughes huge plane that he built for the US Armed Forces, only to have World War II end before its completion, he finished building it, flew it once, and then kept it docked and read at a cost of $1,000,000/year until his death in the 1970s), and drove to Northern California to see the northern end of the Redwood Forest.