Wine Tasting in Oregon

This past weekend we headed south to Portland for a weekend of wine tasting and exploring with Aunt Diane & Uncle Barry (this is Matt’s Aunt & Uncle). We headed out Friday night after work and our first stop in tax-free-land was Deschutes Brewery Pub in the Pearl District. We love Deschutes beer.


Saturday dawned bright and sunny and we headed East. I had never seen most of the Columbia River Gorge along the Washington-Oregon state line, so we took a bit of a road trip.

Viewpoint

 

Multnomah Falls

Lunch at Skamania Lodge

They had a falcon show

 

Wine tasting a Columbia Cliffs

(awesome location, nice people, don’t highly recommend the wine though)

Wine tasting at Maryhill

(good wine, cool location)

Turns out there’s a museum out in middle-of-nowhere-washington called Maryhill Museum. We visitied. It was neat, but I didn’t take any pictures inside. Here’s a few from the outside.

Turns out there’s also a Stonehenge replica out in middle-of-nowhere-Washington dedicated to WWI soldiers. Kinda weird, kinda interesting.

Dinner was at Carlita’s in the Pearl District, which I don’t have any pictures of, but highly recommend. Go for the Ahi Platter. Yum.


Sunday was Willamette Valley wine tasting. Diane & Barry are ‘in the industry’ so they can get us free tastings at almost anywhere along with being able to teach us a lot, so it makes it pretty fun. We visited somewhere I can't remember, Solena, Lenne, and Troon, all of which get a thumbs up from us.

Awesome picnic lunch spot overlooking the vineyard.

Barry, Diane, Mackenzie & Matt

Thanks for hosting us Diane & Barry, we had a great time!






On a completely different note, I just found out that I get to work from home. It will be a couple weeks before my laptop arrives and I get to permanently make the move but I am already organizing the office and getting excited. Top 10 Reasons Mackenzie is Excited to Work at Home:

(in no particular order)
1. Making real food for lunch
2. Saving time commuting
3. Saving the environment not driving
4. Not dying on the viaduct when we have an earthquake
5. Making lattes every morning
6. Getting in my run
7. Tax breaks
8. Running errands when there is no traffic/crowds
9. Matt is excited to have dinner on the table when he gets home
10. Working whenever/wherever I want (do I hear some more work/play vacations coming on?)



Feel free to chip in with additional reasons I should be excited. And/or strategies for not dying of loneliness.