Oneonta, Horsetail, and Scaring New Yorkers

Well, scaring one New Yorker anyway. Pardon the lack of blogging over the past week. Our friend Charlie has been in town from New York all week and we've been having lots of Oregonian-type fun with him. Charlie and John went to UPenn together and since I spent a great deal of time with the theatre crowd at UPenn, I got to know Charlie as well. He has visited us every July for the past three years and we look forward to it every year.

This year, we decided to up our activities a little bit and take him on a serious Oregon hike. He had never been hiking before, so naturally we chose a nearly 5 mile hike to wear him out for his time. We were going to hike up Oneonta Gorge (John's favorite hike), but the weather decided to cool down significantly and we decided that it just wasn't warm enough to go hiking up a creek where we would get quite soaked. Instead, we hiked up to Triple Falls and all around that way, then over to Ponytail Falls and down to Horsetail Falls. We ended the day with devouring Thai food at our favorite Thai restaurant in Lake Oswego.

The triple falls were quite pretty. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you'll see that there were people having a little snack on the edge of the falls! My acrophobia says a big NO THANK YOU.

If you look closely, you can see Oneonta Gorge in the middle where we would have hiked if it had been about 15-20 degrees warmer.

Mmmm, pretty. This is where we freaked Charlie out. Apparently New Yorkers aren't accustomed to standing on edges of cliffs to take pictures. And I thought I was afraid of heights!

The view from behind Ponytail Falls. 

We did take him over the Multnomah Falls to see it, but the place was again packed to the gills. We referred to it as the Disneyland of the Gorge. Charlie said it was impressive, but he definitely preferred the more hidden falls.

Later in the week, we had our annual dinner with Charlie and the boys (they were at grandma and grandpa's for the hike) at McMenamins Imbrie Hall, where we fill ourselves with yummy food and drink and then let the boys climb the crab apple trees towards the back of the property. The boys LOVE Charlie.

We've decided that we need to up the ante next year and take him target shooting. He also hasn't seen the Oregon Coast yet, so that's another activity that we must plan on. Having Charlie visit gives us the opportunity to see our beautiful state like a visitor might. But we also enjoy discussing our east coast living experience and comparing it to here - a conversation that we can really only have with an east-coaster. At some point, we're going to have to return all the visits and haul the family out to New York!