When Sara was just a few months old, I took her and my mom on a train trip down to Eugene OR.
2017-08-22
We took off in the morning of 8/22 - heading to king street station to catch our train. The cascade line runs down to Eugene OR and up to Vancouver BC. We were taking the train down to Eugene and then back the following day.
Boarding the train was nno issue and we were treated with amazing views of the coastline for the first part of the trip. Once we passed through Tacoma, we were inland for the rest of the way. The trip was fun - there was a observation car that we spent quite a bit of time in and we grabbed lunch in the middle.
We explored around Eugene a bit when we got there - starting with a very cool idea of build a to scale model of the solar system. the sun was pretty big and the planets were small (as expected) but the distance between the planets was the most amazing part. Everything was right there until you got to Jupiter - which was a bit of a walk to get to. Pluto (which was still a planet when they made this) was over 10 miles away.
Next on the list was a pretty long walk - about 5 miles - to the Cascades Raptor center. This was a little bird sanctuary that catered to Raptors - both a sanctuary and a rehab center to send some of these birds back out into the wild
A 5 mile walk out was of course followed by a 5 mile walk back. Sara slept for a good part of it, and then cried for a while. She is still a baby after all! We had to stop 3-4 times each way for food and got stretch.
We stayed in a hotel that evening and I spent the evening teaching Sara to hold her toes. So cute!
Then we took the train home the following morning. The trip back was also spectacular in terms of views, but less novel obviously. This trp happened to coincide with the eclipse and the path of the total eclipse passed over Oregon on 8/21 - so the train was still pretty packed with people returning from Oregon from the eclipse. I guess folks that travel afar to watch an eclipse are also ones to take the train to get there… :)
And we were back home! Both Sara and I were missing Angela - but we achieved our goal of allowing Angela to get a very full night sleep.