Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Beginning the New Year in a Different Country...

We awoke in Newberg, Oregon this morning to a beautiful sunny yet foggy picture.  Here is what we saw from our hotel room at the Best Western Newberg Inn ---


We've noticed that on a whole, Oregon seems to be quite foggy / misty, which gives it a cool mystique.

We wanted to head up to the Columbia Gorge Premium Outlets mall, which is east of Portland (Newberg is south-west of Portland).  We knew that if we went to the outlet mall first that by the time we were going back through Portland, Twisted would be open.  


The outlet mall was a bust, but Twisted proved to be a very worthwhile stop.  They had a great selection (perhaps the best sock yarn selection I've ever seen!).  The staff were friendly without being annoyingly so (they even offered to wind my 3 balls of sock yarn even though they were quite busy).  

I felt very welcome at Twisted, and would not hesitate recommending it to anyone reading.  In fact, I'm thinking of stopping by on the way back through Portland!

I scored 1 skein of Yarntini Sport Weight, 1 skein of Yarntini Fingering Weight, and 1 Skein of sport weight Chewy Spaghetti.  There was much OMYGOD - ing and Squeeee - ing.  

Interestingly, Stu and I both agree that so far we have felt most at home in Portland - perhaps because it has a similar feel to Vancouver.  

We continued down the I-5 to Woodburn, Oregon (not far south from Portland) to stop at yet another outlet mall before continuing south down the I-5.

There is a section of the I-5 that is very straight and flat and there are numerous sheep farms filled with a ton of sheep (and some alpacas!).  I think I must have said, "Look! Sheep!" about 100 times!
We drove and drove and crossed into California a little after 7pm.  

Our goal for tonight was to make it to Redding, California, which we managed, but we didn't get to our motel (America's Best Value - Ponderosa Inn) until about 9:30 tonight, and we are exhausted from a very long day of driving.  

The weather is cool and clear and the air is dry.  In this climate, I was surprised to see a bunch of palm trees, but I guess they need to be reminded that this is California!

We will push on to San Fransisco tomorrow morning.  I have to admit that I am having a lot of fun doing this travelogue.  Talk to you tonight! 

3 comments:

lexa said...

Pretty sock yarns!

Enjoy your trip! :)

Karen said...

It's fun traveling along with you!! :) Love those sock yarns - yum.

Anonymous said...

Nice! International yarn crawling. Are you going to go to Art Fibers while you're in San Francisco? They have lovely stuff. I drool over their website all the time.