Chinese New Year

We enjoyed the lion dances in Chinatown celebrating the Chinese New Year. The lion dances are supposed to scare away the evil spirits and summon luck and fortune for the coming year. This is the year of the rabbit. Jacques was pretty wary of the rabbit and the lions! Jacques and Tanner pose with the lucky rabbit. Jacques got a red envelope with a chocolate coin from him.

We went to the convention center to see the cultural exhibit and several cute children's groups performed.

Aquarium Pt. 2

There was a great exhibit of trash sculpture...



Here is a close up of a turtle sculpture made from trash that was picked up along the beach. If you look closely, you can see bottle caps and broken plastic bits. The white coral is made up of broken styrofoam.

The jelly fish below is made up out of plastic bottles found along the beach. It was probably12 or 14 feet tall.

A whale rib cage made of trash...

Oregon Coast Aquarium

We took advantage of the sunny afternoon and drove out to Newport, about 3 hours south west of Portland.

We stopped at Depoe Bay to do some whale watching. Tanner and I each saw a whale blow water above the surface as they were traveling from Alaska to the South. Jacques had fun looking around the center and he even got to use the binoculars too.

At the aquarium we saw a variety of wildlife. My favorite were the jellyfish. They had one pacific octopus but he was curled up in a crevice unavailable for a photo-opp.

Hi ho silver and away!!!!!

Winter Hike

We took a slow walk through the tryon park last week. Jacques found a great walking stick! It was cool but dry and we enjoyed getting a break from the Portland rain ;)