Dear friends and family,

We spent several days in Portland and on the Oregon coast. In Portland we stayed with Kara and David Romero. Kara is a former student of mine from WJC. It was great to catch up with their lives and we really appreciated their hospitality and tips for getting around Portland. Portland is a fabulous city which has a very urban feel in spite of being kind of small. We took public transportation to visit the rose gardens, the Japanese garden, the Portland Art Museum, Powell's book store (the biggest book store in the world they say), farmer's markets, etc. We ate with Kara and David at Habibi's, a really fine Lebanese restaurant.

We were impressed by the beauty of the Oregon coast (see picture), and were fortunate to have two really clear days to camp and get views of the ocean. It was fun to see sea stars and sea anemones on the rocks at low tide and to watch sea lions play from the cliff viewpoints above. It's hard to describe the incredible beauty of the rocks and waves.

Next we stopped at Jedediah Smith State Park which is in the Redwood National Park. My friend Mark and I stayed at Jedediah Smith for 5 days on our cross country bike trip 31 years ago. It was great fun to find our old campsite, virtually unchanged. I called Mark from the site and described to him what I saw. It matched his memory as it did mine. The Redwoods are a marvelous mystical thing. Pictures cannot communicate the environment they create. On one of the pictures above I crawled into a fallen tree and took a picture of Ruth as I looked out. We were pleased to have some beautiful weather as relaxing among the Redwoods is especially nice.

Now we headed back to Oregon and some caves and Crater Lake National Park.

More later.