Oregon football | Smith Family Tour

On Friday afternoon, right after Justin got of work, we packed up the rest of our stuff and hit the road. We had about 6 hours of driving to get to our hotel for the night. That doesn’t sound like much, but I had been packing all day and Justin had been working so we were both already exhausted.

One thing we’ve learned about driving is that it’s SO much better to do it during the day. You miss out on so many amazing things when you drive at night. Not to mention it’s lonely on the roads we drive and can be pretty scary. To prove how creepy it can be….

Around 11pm we were driving through Oregon. It’s pitch black outside and there aren’t many cars on the road. We can barely see the mountains that are surrounding us, but know they’re there based on the curvy, steep roads. This is seriously the middle of no-where.

As we’re driving, all the sudden Justin yells out “look out your window”! I glance up in time to see a GIANT dragon statue right outside my window. It’s even light up with a spot light making it even creepier…as if that was possible. I freaked.

Just when I think it can’t get weirder, we notice a couple of lights in the valley below. It looks like a really small town with just a few houses. I mean maybe 4 or 5 houses at most. Right above the “village”, in a sea of darkness, is a bright circle of light and weird clouds. It was like a giant evil eye of light. Sound weird? Well, it was. I was so freaked out I told Justin to bust a move and get us out of there.

I managed to find a picture of the dragon. I didn’t take it but I found it on the internet. You tell me it wouldn’t weird you out to see that in the middle of no-where at night!

This is during the daytime. Photo borrowed from google images.

As for a picture of the creepy clouds/light, I found something similar. If you look at the pic below you’ll see a circle of clouds. Imagine if you saw that circle, but the rest of the sky was pitch black. Scary, no?

Anyway, we made it to our hotel and crashed for the night. The next morning I think I weirded out the guy at the check-out desk when I asked him if there was a “dragon town” somewhere close by. I tried to explain, but he just keep looking more confused. I guess I’ll always be the “weird dragon girl”. Hehe. We continued on our way and headed for our first stop at the University of Oregon to see, you guessed it, the football stadium. It was pretty stinkin’ nice!

University of Oregon's football stadium.

Our next stop was Oregon State about an hour away. The entrance to their football stadium was so pretty. We ended up circling the whole thing so we got a few great pics.

Oregon State's football stadium.

It turns out that Oregon State was having their spring game. (Random trivia, they make you buy tickets for the game. How strange!?) Justin tried to get the ticket takers (in the right corner of the above photo) to let him in, but no dice. We kept driving around and finally found someone who let Justin sneak in for a few pics.

Oregon State's football stadium.

Oregon State’s campus was also gorgeous. We found an awesome little Hawaiian restaurant that had THE best sauce we’ve ever had. It was like a soy sauce/tariyaki combo that was insanely good. They even had signs in the restaurant saying it was a crime to steal the bottles of sauce! A quick lunch and we were back on the road. And what a beautiful road it was…

While we were driving we saw this gorgeous field of yellow flowers. I wanted a picture of it SO bad. When we realized we would be passing it again to go back to the interstate from campus, I begged Justin to pull over. I’m so glad he did. I think this is my favorite picture I’ve ever taken. It’s definitely getting framed when we get a house! (P.S. I didn’t even photoshop it!)

A few more hours on the road and we made it to Washington. I have to say, the one thing we noticed about the state is all the stunning bridges. As soon as we crossed the state line, we started going over bridges. And then more bridges. Every single one was beautiful.