Easter Lego

It's been a busy time the last few weeks, but we got ourselves some Legos for Easter - the Assembly Square, the 10 year anniversary celebratory set of the Lego 'Modular' series - and have enjoyed putting it together since then - good times!

 As usual, the attention to detail is delightful. Some of the more impressive pieces are the red couch on the right side apartment and the dentist's chair on the floor below.

Given our affinity for coffee and baked goods, we very much enjoyed the café and the bakery as well, of course:

 The collection has now grown to a point where we will need to make some structural adjustments going forward...:

Spring break!

Well, actually one noteworthy picture before we get to spring break: Skippy (on the far right) celebrated his 35th birthday on March 4th by getting us together for a round of board games - which we hadn't done in years: Tiny Epic Galaxies, Mysterium, and Monarch were the games of choice.

Alright, now for spring break: this year we decided to venture further towards eastern Oregon than we have ever done before (admittedly a low bar, having only gone as far as east as the wider Bend area until now): John Day. We went via Government camp on our drive east and - as every time when we get in the neighborhood of Mt. Hood this time of year, were genuinely surprised that there was still a LOT of snow. It was heavily snowing at times, actually and we were glad that we still had chains in the trunk.

First stop: the Palisades near Clarno. A nice little 3.5 mile hike ('Geo Loop') got us from the Palisades through some rolling hills to Hancock Field Station - which turns out to be private property of OMSI and we were technically trespassing as an initially stern OMSI representative informed us. But we talked our way through that and continued to hike on OMSI property (Michaela's edit: with permission!! :))... Billy taught us well!

   

After spending the night in John Day, we started bright and early in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, first checking out the northern part, then the southern - hiking around and then into the blue basin. It was sunny, very lonely and silent - beautiful!

And from the fossil beds we got to the famous painted hills:

On our way home, another reminder that we are in the back country:

We have been in Oregon for nine years now - there is still so much left to see!