Amazing!!

The flight over the western part of the country seeing so many mountain ranges from the plane...

Finally being on the west coast of the USA for the first time....
Driving from the airport to our motel...
The drive to Mt. Hood, Oregon...

The view when we reached the Timberline Lodge area...
ALL amazing!!

almost at the lodge...

Timberline Lodge. Free for public to walk around inside.

Back of lodge.

Seeing thick snow in July, while it's in the 50's-60 outside?...
Taking the Magic Mile sky ride (ski lift kinda thing) up from the lodge...
Standing near the top of Mt. Hood...
ALL amazing!!!

Going up, Mt. Hood's peak ahead. Our lift took us up to the tree top level!
Here we are at the top of the ride, altitude 7000 ft! The peak is at around 11,000 feet so we are still a few thousand down from it! There is one more lift that takes skiers up higher than where we were.

The view going back down.

Outside the building at the bottom of the ride.

We had to walk across snow in our sneakers for a couple hundred of feet to get from the lodge building to the sky ride base!! It was slippery and scary but so fun. See, this is a rare experience for us!! My son born in Florida, I moved there as a very young child, and my husband born in India. We have hardly been around snow in our lives!!!

I think the sky ride is one of the most incredible things I have ever experienced. And I am afraid of heights! But it was so quiet, so chilly, so snowy, and so beautiful!! I just can't stop feeling excited about all these things.

So we went to the Mt. yesterday. Today we explored downtown Portland and that was fun too! Tomorrow we are going to the coast, we will see the Pacific Ocean! We are just going all over. The weather today in Portland was chilly in the morning then sunny and in the 70's later on. So nice!! I will definitely take that over 90+ degree Florida weather. I think it will be warmer tomorrow but we are going to the coast, where the breezes keep it cooler!

The time difference(3 hours earlier for us) is confusing but not as bad as when we go to India. I am sitting here typing this ahead of posting it, at 10pm local time Sunday night but it's 1am at home! We brought our laptop with us and we have free wifi here at the motel(I guess these days, that's a given!), so I could easily type this. And I am almost ready for bed here. I hear some fireworks and firecrackers outside. I heard some last night too. 'Tis the season of noise! I will probably post again in a couple days.

Happy 4th of July!!!