Oregon - I LOVE this place

After being in Oregon for the week of my dad's funeral, we still had a lot of unfinished business (by no means is it all done yet) but Harriet and I went to Oregon a few weeks ago to see dad's house freshly painted and cleaned up and have a few business meetings.

Harriet clipping off some rose bush stems to transport back to Texas. Let's hope we can have dad's roses bloom in our own yards!

View of dad's house from the hillside

My dad planted thousands of flower bulbs in the fall and the daffodils were just starting to bloom when Harriet and I were there. He sent me a couple hundred bulbs for my birthday in December and they are blooming as well. I'll have to post some pictures as the tulips are just beautiful. I smile every time I see flowers because I know how much they meant to my dad. He absolutely loved them!

Side view of my dad's house. The logs on the deck all came from his property and were hand carved by one of his good friends.

This little stream that feeds into the nearby Mohawk River runs through my dad's property. Harriet was nervous I was going to fall into the water! On the other side of the river, there are apple, plum and peach trees.

Harriet and Sue getting a few more rose clippings from the rose garden for us to take back to Texas. My dad always told us that these rose bushes were his grandmother's he brought from Texas to Oregon so we thought we would try our hand at bringing them back home.

Up on the mountain behind my dad's house. He planted 5,000 trees 15 years ago and this is one of the many that has survived. I can remember years ago having to walk all over this hillside taking off the protective netting of the baby trees so they could grow correctly. I can't believe they are so big already! We actually scattered my dad's ashes beneath this very tree on January 28, the day after his funeral and birthday. We wanted to take a picture of it so we could hopefully remember the location for years to come. Someone else will own this property hopefully soon but we are going to be those people coming back in a few years to ask if we can walk up the hillside to see my dad.

We love you Dad!

The horse trail up the mountain.

We stayed with Sue (thank you so much for having us) as dad's house was completely empty and we would have had to sleep in sleeping bags on the floors!

I truly hope Harriet and I will be able to visit Oregon at least every year going forward and be able to take our kids on some of the same adventures my dad would take us on. My dad lived in Oregon for over 20 years and we spent each and every summer in Oregon along with Christmas, Thanksgiving and countless other holidays. My dad lived on 18 acres and had vegetable gardens, raspberry and blackberry gardens, a pond full of trout he stocked each summer, horses, and all the adventure kids could ask for. It was an amazing experience being able to spend so much time with him each summer. We never ran out of things to do in Oregon as he was just an hour from the ocean, an hour from the ski slopes and was surrounded by national parks, lakes and rivers that were just minutes away. Not to mention all the festivals, farmer's markets, concerts and soccer camps we enjoyed while visiting.

Oregon is a magical place and we will always have a huge spot in our hearts for this area.