portland -- home from home or Spiti from Spiti

Ok , so I have been a bit remiss for not capturing anything about the latest part of our trip since leaving Eureka and travelling to Portland to stay with our wonderful friend - Soulis & Anna Kosmas and their beautiful family and friends. The only thing missing was our Rod & Ann, but Skype did help a little.

So here goes with a round-up the following from our 8 hour trip up the I - 1 / the 101 and the I - 5 last Monday but a last few shots from the Hotel around breakfast time before we left

Nice idea for the hotel to have a chauffer driven limo for the parties there.
A great stay with a very nice hotel -- with mad things going on so many memories--
And some mad people---

How to make an aircon unit into art

Don't ask -- we have no idea what this lot were all about ---
So we set off on what was to be around 8 hours drive and Lynda thankfully took some of the strain off me --

Amazing scenery all the way up, with it changing from one valley to the next --

Apparently they make a great security guard

 And so into the Redwoods which we probably wont do justice

Oh for the chance to do a bit of fishing in these rivers -- think that could be fun

Interesting snippets of information about how bad the law makers were in the 1800's, to the indigenous people---

Taking some of the strain from me -- Mrs A doing a great job

Getting there -- only 205 miles to go -- we saw plenty of this brown stuff on the way up

A little place called Cottage Grove

 

 Oh yes -- and for a stranger they have a sign cluster like this to help work out which route you need to take - piece of cake

 

And we seemed to drive along these 3 beautiful looking vintage cars for about 50 miles. It was still a bank holiday so these Silverbirds and their pretty motors were probably heading home after the holiday weekend.

 

 

 

 

And Lynda's favourite was passing this saying the driver must be ok with his feminine side but it turned out to be a Lady trucker.

 

And this was an exceptionally modified truck that was worth capturing -- still don't know why they do this when they keep it so clean -- don't think it looked like it had ever been offroad.

 

 

 

So a few more really nice shots before we get up to Portland---

 So we were up the top of a large hill looking at the bottom -- quite a bit disconcerting when you are driving --

And just a random farmhouse - looked nice though---

 

So we got to Hillsboro , Portland early evening and had a first of a gathering of the Kosmas family ---

 

Really grateful that on the first evening we ended with Chris , Kim Anna and Katerina round as well as Lori and Mark to join Soulis, Anna , Lynda and me for tea -- Shrimps , Rice , Sauce and wine -- great combo but Lynda not impressed with Red wine from the fridge ---

 

Soulis doing a bit of talking to his babies at the bottom of the garden --

 And talking to his little humming bird friends.

 
Tuesday after breakfast Lori stopped by and took Lynda and me to the Mad Greek Deli for lunch and to see this place of Pondo Kosmas that he was building, before he passed and which Lori and Jake ( Pondo's best friend ) are continuing to develop with a Mobile food cart now as well.

 

 
For thos who had never met Pondo , I can tell you that he was a larger than life character who lived life to the full while sharing his love to his wife - 5 children , -- his brother and his family and to his parents -- he was totally committed to them all, so it was a tragedy when we lost him -- oh and when you became his friend then it was for life and for Lynda and me we are privileged had him in our lives, even though it was not for long enough.
 
Pondo was a passionate sports fan -- played some mean Golf , achieving hi dream of playing at courses like St. Andrews even if his golf attire was questionable but loud was one of the descriptions.
He was also very passionate about Football ( or Soccer ) here and we started to swap shirts when we knew that he liked Chelsea - so we were able to also bring over the odd scarf , shirt and flags as can be seen in the Mad Greek Deli today----

 

 

 

 

 

 In the picture above you can see a picture of Aegina Town in Greece and his Portland timbers team scarf but with the logo of Pondo's Army on -- Pleased to say that we are some of his troops.

 

 

Wednesday was a lunch with Soulis brother Fotis and a really nice light Thai meal followed by an evening at an Outback with great friends of Anna & Soulis -- Gerry and Roula and Alexis & Voula--

 

 
Great shame that Jill couldn't be with us but commitments to children have to be done --

 

So with these fine Greek Americans -- Souli & Anna with their ties to Aegina , Alexis & Voula and their ties to the Peloponnese and Gerry & Roula with their ties to Corfu -- Great company , now firm friends and I know we will see them all again-- hopefully sooner rather than later.  

 

Yesterday Anna had to see a doctor so Lynda and I went to Washington Square shopping Centre and did a bit of shopping , including getting an amazing Cheese Cake from The Cheesecake Factory for after dinner, which was quite amazing -- Soulis best friend Kostas from Vancouver USA ( Not Canada ) and big Mark -- extreme fisherman who is if shortly to Alaska for a couple of months fishing for Salmon and of course Toni and Payton.

 

It rounded off an amazing 4 days where we were taken care of so amazingly well by these wonderful Kosmas Family and while we got no shots of this last evening of everyone we did capture a picture of this at the end of the evening which I guess was a signal to show how lucky Lynda and I are or maybe it was someone upstairs telling us that we have found the pot at the end of the rainbow.

 

 

 Need to get a copy of the last picture of the group that Nina took with Lori's IPhone.

Now where was I -- oh yes "Somewhere over the rainbow , way up high ----------------