We have just returned from our annual trek to Portland, Oregon to visit my dad and his wife.  We made this a relatively low-key trip.  In the past, we’ve taken longer trips to Portland to allow time to meet our friends in Seattle and do things like take a side trip to Olympic National Park in Washington or spend a week in Glacier National Park.

This time, we spent a lot of time debating if there was a way to go to Portland with Tisen.

The reality was that we would need to spend 6 days driving if we didn’t fly and there was no way I was going to load Tisen into the cargo hold of a plane.  If we were going to take 6 days to drive to Portland, I wanted to make it an adventure through Yellow Stone–a place I have yet to go.  But, neither Pat nor I could afford to take that kind of time off work.

In the end, we opted for asking our friends to watch Tisen and keeping our trip short.  Our friends from Seattle offered to come down to Portland to spend a day with us so we didn’t have to take 2 or more days to see them.  My dad didn’t plan any multi-day side trips; we would have plenty of flexibility in our schedule to visit with our friends.

So, last Monday morning, the alarm went off at 4:00AM and I hopped out of bed like that was the time I got up every day.  By 5:45AM, Tisen was fed and walked and we were packed and ready to roll.  Tisen excitedly ran for the van just sure he was going on a new adventure with us.  I had a hard time dropping him off at our friends’ house.

We made it to Portland a little early and by 2PM were sitting in my dad’s family room with full bellies (having stopped for lunch on the way from the airport) and suffering from only mild separation anxiety.

It felt good to just sit and hang out, catching up.  I, of course, got out my camera and started looking for things to shoot.

Pat sat across from me with his feet up on a foot rest.  I noticed for the first time that his shoes, which he has had for at least a couple of years, have outlines of the shoemakers on the soles.  I couldn’t resist trying to shoot the soles of his shoes.

Then, my dad was telling a story and chuckling.  I had to capture some of his facial expressions (although most of them didn’t come out so flattering).

Finally, I put my macro lens on my camera and went out to the garden.  My dad’s wife is an amazing gardener and can always be counted on to have beautiful flowers.  Although the surprisingly cool temperatures sent be back inside after only shooting a couple of flowers.