Tim & Denise Tiner Travels: 2016 Alaska Cruise

Welcome to another summer adventure with Tim and Denise. This trip will be a special one as we honor Dale and Julee's 50th Wedding Anniversary by traveling to Seattle to get on a cruise ship and cruise to Alaska. It is going to be so fun. But first......

Denise and I, rather than traveling stand by on United, decided to use our air mile points from previous trips on Delta to fly direct to Eugene Oregon. As it turns out, we would not have been able to get on a flight out of SLC on United as most flights were over sold. So we made a great decision there. We arrived in Eugene at 12:15 and was met by our wonderful kids (Travis and Mackenzie) who are out here selling pest control services. They live in Albany, Oregon which is about a 50 minute drive north of Eugene.

After loading our baggage into their nice, new to them, car, we headed off looking for some lunch. Travis had looked up a Diner's, Drive-In's and Dive location that he thought sounded fun. We arrived and drove around the block looking for this sandwich shop many times. It turned out that it was a small trailer sitting in a small little area with some picnic tables out in front of it. Yes...we found it finally. But it was worth the wait. The sandwiches were really quite good...much more than we needed.

After our meal, we drove Travis to his area in Eugene where he is selling the services. Timing was good because his whole team is in Eugene for the next few weeks selling. So we had to drop him off there and leave him to go get some 'sales'. They are lucky to get one sale a day...and two a day is pretty good. Crazy work. Anyway...we left him there and headed to Albany.

We arrived at their apartment here around 3 PM. We kind of just hung out until we had to take Mackenzie (with Madison, my nephew's wife) to this little warehouse area where they work in a small office answering phones for the same company that these guys work for (Pointe Pest Control). Pretty scary, isolated area, it is. I hope they lock the doors when there. Anyway, Denise and I returned to the apartment where I worked a bit online and Denise read some books. Later, we picked up Mackenzie around 8:30 PM and came home and waited until Travis returned home...around 10 PM.

Our trip has begun.....

Day Two:

Day 2 was a work day for me. So I started around 6 AM and worked until about 3:30 PM'ish. When everyone was up, we went with Austin, Madison, Travis and Mackenzie to Elmer's...a breakfast house. The food was really good. From there, we returned back to the apartment and Travis and Austin went off to work. A bit later, Denise and Mackenzie went shopping for some material to make a quilt for Mackenzie. I worked. :-) At about 3:45, we took Mackenzie and Madison to work again. Then Denise and I went to visit Miranda to see their new baby. Miranda is the wife of another nephew of mine here. I have 3 nephews and a son of my cousins (Rachel) who are all working out here. We had a nice visit with Miranda and their baby was sleeping...so we just got to view him...not hold him. He is a beautiful baby boy!

After visiting a bit there, we headed off to go to the movies. I'm always amazed how much more expensive a movie is outside the state of Utah. Nonetheless, we saw the new Star Trek movie. The theater, well, it is similar to the Bountiful theater (only you pay twice as much here). And from what I can tell, it is the only theater in Albany (7 screens). A fellow sitting just down from us thought the movie was a comedy! He laughed through the whole darn thing...out loud. Even in the most serious points, he'd start cracking up. People were dying and he was laughing. It caused us all to chuckle and look at him. Anyway, I did not realize I was going to a comedy.

After watching the movie, I took their car to a car wash to shine it up for them as it had lots of bugs on it. I think this was Travis doing free pest control the past few weeks. Anyway, the car shined up nicely. After doing that, we headed back to pick up Mackenzie from work and headed back to the apartment. There, she had prepared some really good zucchini boat things that were soooo good. I had not eaten anything since breakfast. And by the time we ate...10 PM...I was starving. But it is not good to eat that late...at least for me. But these kids, due to their schedules, eat then always! Bummer.

Day Three:

I am writing this waiting for everyone to get up and go. I think we are headed up to Portland since none of us have been there before (other than in airports). Travis decided to take his last vacation day today. That was surprising...but we are glad to spend more time with him. He is trying to get to 150 sales and he is at 130 with about 3 weeks left. I hope he makes it.

Portland was a lot of fun. We weren't quite sure what we were going to do up there...but in the end, it was a full day. We first headed to downtown Portland searching for a good doughnut...and found the famous VooDoo Dougnut shop. It only took 45 minutes in line, one plate of nachos from a food truck while waiting to spend $28 on a dozen doughnuts. I must say, they were all really yummy and they have lasted 3 days almost. My favorite, actually was the boring old Buttermilk doughnut. I did get one that was called 'The Champ'. It had a lemon frosting on it and was filled with cherry filling. They made it look like a baseball. Anyway....all of them were so rich. We did not need that many.

After getting the doughnuts, we walked through a street fair over to the river. There we sat down and sampled the doughnuts we had just purchased. It was fun to watch the people and see some of the shops. After about 2 hours of doughnut waiting and consumption, we headed off to see the Portland Rose Gardens. We easily found them but parking was an issue. We eventually found a spot and then jumped on a bus that took you through the park making many stops along the way. In addition to the Rose Gardens, the Japanese Gardens and the Oregon Zoo were also found in this park. The park is actually on a hillside which made the travel interesting too. Nonetheless, it was fun and relaxing.

After leaving the gardens, we headed to a deli called out by the Diners, Drive-ins and Dive show. Unfortunately, traffic was crazy and our GPS was not real clear on where a split occurred at and we ended up missing the exit. So we just continued on to the Portland Temple. The temple sits right on I5, kind of like the San Diego Temple. Boy is it pretty! There were many bridal parties there.

After leaving the temple grounds, we headed down back to Albany. The sales team was going to celebrate their good week by purchasing wings and pizza and going to a park to play some soccer. There were some 30 people who showed up of the boys and their wives and friends who were out visiting. It was a very nice evening visiting with all the kids. The weather here in Albany is cool and pleasant.

Day Four:

Today was the Sabbath so we got up and attended our church meetings. The ward was so friendly and nice. It was a nice 3 hours. Brings us comfort that Travis and Mackenzie are around really nice people. After church, we relaxed a bit and then with Austin, Madison, Dalin, Miranda, Beau and Tyler we headed to Newport...an Oregon beach town. We paid to get into a park where a lighthouse was called Yaquina Point. As we were walking out to the lighthouse, we noticed a rock moving down in the water. It was a gray WHALE!! I saw my first whale in open water. It was huge. We watched that whale for quite awhile as we walked out to the lighthouse and back. We also went down to a black sand beach to play around there.

After leaving Yaquina, we headed to a restaurant to get some food as most everyone was hungry. We found a place on Nye Beach called the 'Chowder Bowl'. We ended up getting a table for 10 and enjoyed some pretty good seafood and chowder. Very yummy. After that we headed down to Nye Beach where we played Bocci Ball and watched people fly their kites. It was pretty cool and windy...but it felt good to be at the ocean again.

After few hours on the beach, we headed back to Albany. We arrived back around 9:00PM. I had to pack my bags quickly. Then after visiting with Austin, Madison, Travis and Mackenzie, we headed off to bed with our hearts and minds on Karlie and Dustin back in Utah and the life changing events taking place in their lives there.

Tomorrow, early, we get on an Amtrak train and head to Seattle.

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