Day 3 began in Eugene, where we woke up to incredibly green surroundings outside the French-door windows of the hotel’s continental-breakfast dining room (where a creek ran behind the hotel, complete with uber-green shade trees and ducks, and even a duck called “007” who had learned to sneak in the French doors to steal waffles). Lovely place, Oregon is.

We ate, packed back up, and hit the road again for Seattle. …

But first: College campus driving tour for Rene!

We cruised around Eugene a bit to look at the University of Oregon — wow, pretty campus. Then we headed up the 5 to Corvalis, where we took a detour to Oregon State University — also nice campus (and great stadium!). Rene is only moderately interested in the Oregon schools because they’re out of our price range anyway — they don’t participate in the “Western Exchange” program, where western states cut the ridiculously inflated out-of-state tuition for each other. (At least Oregon doesn’t participate with California — probably because California is being stingy in some way.)

Anyway, after the Oregon-college tour, we headed through Portland, where we’d wanted to stop, but decided to keep going to spend more time in Seattle. My main thought about Portland: IT’S SO MUCH BIGGER THAN I THOUGHT! I wasn’t expecting a full-on city for some reason. Looked nice, but we only saw it from the freeway. Continue reading →