The taxi picked us up at 8.45am for the 45min drive to the airport in Wenatchee. It wasn't long after we left the snowy surrounds of Leavenworth that we came across orchards full of trees with no leaves. The driver said they were pear trees & Leavenworth was a big pear area. That makes sense as Saint Nicholas was giving the kids gold wrapped pears on Friday night & we tasted the local pears in the street on Saturday. They tasted different to our pears. Closer to Wenatchee the fruit trees became apple trees. The snow also started to disappear.
The airport was very small & mustn't have had an X-ray machine as we had to hand in the keys to our bags so they could be searched.
The flight to Seattle was only 30mins. We had a good view of snow capped mountains before everything disappeared into fog.
We had a short delay on the next flight to Portland. The captain said flights had been delayed all day because of the weather. The ice truck had to come in & spray the plane with anti-freeze.
This flight was only 34mins long. We hit fog again & when it cleared we could see lots of snow covered fields. It was very pretty.
Everyone has been talking about the weather. Everywhere we go we are told it isn't usually this cold. In fact, a man at breakfast said today it hadn't been this cold at his place in Oregon since 1972. Just before we took off from Seattle, the board said the current temperature in Portland was -4.
Our hotel in Portland is called Hotel Rose. I have since seen other references to Portland & roses. It seems Portland got the nickname of City of Roses many years ago after it held it's first Rose Festival in 1907 & it is still an annual event. It also has the perfect climate for growing roses resulting in a large number of rose gardens.
This afternoon we walked a few blocks up the road to the main shopping area. Macy's have been having a 25% off everything sale & today was the last day. As an added bonus, there is no sales tax in Oregon. Robyn bought a new suitcase & I bought a couple of bags. Let the shopping begin!
We had dinner in a sports bar/pub & our waitress gave us some tips about what to see while in Portland. It looks like an interesting city & seems to be easy to get around via light rail and bus.