T is for...

Earlier this week our grandchildren spent a couple of days with us while their hard-working parents enjoyed a little holiday getaway. We wanted to do something fun with the kids and since the weather had improved vastly from the previously icy, snowy week before we came up with a small Portland Adventure. It was a modified "4 Ts" trek, similar to what we did with friends last year. We swapped out the "trail" part for a walk on the new Tilikum Crossing bridge. So we drove to the zoo in our Toyota and got on the train to downtown Portland.












Each kid carried along a little notebook and pen to write down all the things we saw starting with the letter T. They quickly spotted tracks, trucks, tires, trees and telephones, then it got a little harder. Marco decided to embellish his list with a drawing of a turkey. Once downtown, we walked a couple blocks, past food trucks selling tacos and tamales and boarded the Trolley to the south waterfront area.






That's where we got on the overhead Tram that connects the two campuses of the Oregon Health Sciences University.



















The view from the Tram is amazing and we all agreed that the cars and houses down below looked like toys from so far above. We rode up, then back down again, then walked several blocks to Portland's beautiful, new Tilikum Crossing Bridge. It is the first bridge of its kind in the US—for buses, streetcars, trains, bicycles and pedestrians—no cars allowed. It was beautiful in the late afternoon, winter sunshine.


















Then we reversed our route and headed home. We were tired and happy with our big adventure. We had pretty well exhausted our supply of T words by then, but the final train ride rewarded us with one last beauty.






Tattoo!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad