Japanese Gardens

Daily Weather Report: No rain for most of the day. That means we are out and about. Today we did a lot of things we had already done, so no pictures there. Or else they were too boring to photograph. Like what? Walking to the Post Office to mail post cards to the boys friends at home. Not so exciting, but yeah for being outdoors and getting a great walk in. An example of things we have already blogged about: Sky Tram. Romney has been dying to do another "no car" day and to ride the skytram again. So we took the bus downtown to the street train that took us to the sky tram that we rode to the top and had an a great view of Portland and the mountains, then we ate at Pioneer Square, and took the train to Washington Park where we did do something we had not yet done. . .
The Portland Japanese Gardens. The weather had looked "threa-
tening" for about an hour, but we decided to take our chances and it was a good thing too. We had ourselves a lovely, peaceful time. The man at the gate gave the boys a kids' scavenger hunt and promised them if they found everything on the list they could return it for a prize. Oh, bless you Mr. Ticket Man, for my children doth love a tricky scavenger hunt.

Mr. Ticket Man turned a location they were lukewarm about into one of their favorites so far, with only a paper map, a pencil and a list of hidden garden treasures. With items like "Dancing Peacock" (the name of a tree), Lion Dogs, and Jizo the road guardian, who wouldn't want to participate. After all articles were located, they raced back to the window to choose their prize, a Japanese Garden bookmark that they were very thrilled to receive.

With that out of the way, we walked through one more time, this time focusing on the peace-
fulness of the gardens (where cell phones and obnoxious snacking were forbidden.) We met up with Bill at the Max station by the zoo, where once again, he was a bit sad to hear of all our adventures while he had been stuck behind a desk at home. Lucky for him there was one last thing we hadn't yet checked off of our to do list for the day. . .

Find the place in the Wash-
ington Park Max station that listed pi to see if William could find the "alleged" (I say "alleged" because math was never my strong point and I never, ever cared to learn pi to that many digits and I only read on the internet that they have engraved the pi wrong) error that is supposed to be permanently now part of the station decor. William, who does have pi memorized to that many digits, did confirm there was an error and that was all poor Bill got to see of that part of our day. We did take him with us to Powell's again, once it started raining, where we stayed warm and dry and entertained until the shower past. We ate a yummy mexican dinner (yup, VEGAN!) and came home, left our noisy children behind and took an hour walk, just the two of us. Perfect end to a pretty great day.