Wiebke & Jo's visit

As is by now almost a tradition, Wiebke and Jo visited us this summer for a few days before heading down south to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.

Sadly, Michaela & I had to work Thursday and Friday, so we were limited to a walk to the Wilsonville Farmer's Market to get dinner (Gyros for Wiebke and me, Pizza for Jo and 'dinner light' for poor Michaela) and a few Oregon berries on Thursday and an excursion to Bridgeport's 3D movie cinema to see 'Despicable Me 2" on Friday. The latter being easy, happy entertainment, just as expected.

Now for Saturday we had originally planned to drive to the coast, but Jo wanted to experience windsurfing first hand and who am I to discourage her from that? After a brief trip to the Beaverton Farmer's Market Saturday morning (more berries!) and a call to Bigwinds to make sure we'd be able to get some windsurfing gear for Jo at 'The Hook' (the 'bunny hill'of windsurfing close to Hood River) we got on our way via the scenic Columbia River Gorge along I-84 in two cars: Michaela, Wiebke, Jo and Pepper in one, me, myself and I (plus my windsurfing gear) in the other. Bringing along my gear turned out to be way too optimistic. The Gorge was calm, very calm - not too surprising actually as the wind conditions are typically poor when it is hot in Portland and boy, it was hot in Portland- should have checked the wind forecast!!
Once in Hood River we enjoyed a light lunch at the Grounds Cafe and chatted with various dog owners that passed our outdoor table. One was with a sweet and very young puppy.  Not 15 minutes later that owner returned: the puppy had escaped after being tied up in front of one of the cafes and was missing. Poor thing! (The puppy that is.) Luckily the puppy showed up in a store nearby a few minutes later and owner and dog were happily rejoined!
A quick drive got us to 'The Hook' where a less pleasant surprise awaited us: Bigwinds was closing up shop - too little wind, too little even for first timers (at least in their book). We were rather disappointed given that we had called in the morning and had received no warning that wind conditions may be so poor that we couldn't rent any gear (my gear is not at all suitable for Jo, so that was not an option, either).

After weighing our options, we settled on hiking along Eagle creek instead:


Good fun!

We concluded the day with a nice BBQ dinner on our patio. Somehow we got no pictures of our feast of chicken, beef, potatoes, squash, zucchini, tomatoes... - I guess I was too busy at the grill...

Good times!