On Wednesday, 10/2, we flew from San Francisco to Portland, OR, for the second half of our trip!  After checking in to the Residence Inn in the Pearl District, we checked out a beautiful little park nearby which exemplifies Portland’s thoughtful city design and architecture.

10/2 was also our 9th wedding anniversary!  Shout out to the Alaska airlines flight attendant who gave us some prosecco to celebrate!  We also lined up a babysitter that night and went out for a celebratory dinner.

The next day we were planning to meet up with Nellie at her family farm in the afternoon, so we spent the morning at the Portland Zoo.  It was fantastic!  The exhibits were all set up so you could be really close to the animals while they were resting!  We got to see bats, cheetahs, mountain lions, and even African wild dogs!  Which we missed on our honeymoon.

Then we headed out to Gaston, OR, to the McAdams family hazelnut farm.  I have been hearing about this farm since I first met Nellie in college, and it was so wonderful to finally see it in person!  It was a rainy day which put the actual harvest on hold, and meant that we had time for a delicious lunch with Nellie and her parents and then a very informative tour of the farm including tractor demos.

This was one of three tractors!  This one brushes the hazelnuts into lines between the rows of trees.  The second one picks up the hazelnuts and sorts them from the other debris and the third one collects them and deposits them in the bins (I think).

We took a group pic with Nellie and her dad, Dave, here in “Nellie’s orchard” which was the first group of hazelnut trees they planted, back when Nellie was born.

We also stopped to pick (and eat!) a few apples.

We ended up back in the garden, admired their very large pumpkins, and the kids picked some flowers to decorate our hotel room!

Thank you so much to Nellie and her family for hosting us for such a beautiful and informative afternoon!

Back in Portland that evening, we took public transportation to dinner at the Deschutes brewpub.

The next day (10/4), we met up with the rest of the Mahoneys for a tour of Tim’s company’s fertilizer transfer facility!  But first, some Voodoo Doughnuts!

IRM gave us a wonderful tour, including a ride on this “Trackmobile” named Hercules.  It’s a train engine, essentially, that can move the heavy train cars around on the track.  The kids even got to drive it!

Then we went down to the water to see where the materials are delivered.  Thank you so much to Kenny for his patience answering all the many questions he was asked!

After the tour (thanks again to Tim for setting it up!) we went to the famous Powell’s bookstore downtown and had lunch at the Rogue brewpub.

Then we briefly went to the Portland Rose Garden.

At the nearby playground, Sarah discovered she was able to do the monkey bars!

That night we went to the pre-wedding dinner for Annie and Jimmy, and sadly it seems I neglected to take any pictures!

The next day we had brunch at the home of some grad school friends of Andrew, again not pictured!  But I did get this one of Blaine losing yet another tooth!  The tooth fairy came twice on this trip.

And the final act of our big west coast trip was the wedding itself!  It was at a venue called the Colony in the St. John’s neighborhood.  The space was beautiful.

Here we are patiently waiting to be photographed, all dressed up.

I’m sad I didn’t get more pictures of the bride and groom, but here’s a tiny glimpse of Annie!  And another one from the toasts.

We had a great time and were sad to cut out early to get to bed for our 6am flight the next morning.  Heard it was a great party, though!  Thanks so much for including us in the big day and giving us an excuse for a trip out west.