Thursday Thrills

For the summer, a group of my friends are planning weekly "field trips" around town.  For my week we're going to go on a walking tour of some of the fountains and splash pads in downtown Portland.  Last week I took just my two kids on a test run to see if what I planned would actually work, since I've never visited any of the places before.

Silly faces riding the train (MAX) to Portland.

 Skidmore Fountain.

Salmon Street Springs.  I had been to this one before with some nieces and nephews.  It was Isaiah's favorite.

This is the Ira Keller fountain.  There are signs everywhere saying to stay out of the water.  But there were tons of kids in the water.  I ended up taking this one out of the final tour; it was a long walk to get to it and wasn't that fun to play in.

 Teacher's Fountain at Director Park was our last stop.  It's a new splash pad and I was pretty sure it would be the favorite.  Isaiah took off running and face planted in the shallow pool.  He was soaking wet and everyone who saw it gasped and watched this sad soggy boy run over to his mom.  So he changed into his dry clothes after spending all of 15 seconds in the best fountain.

We ate our lunch at Teacher's Fountain and then headed to the MAX station.  When our train came, we weren't allowed to board because for some reason that train was turning around.  So everyone got off the train and we all got on the next (supercrowded) one.  Right when we got on they announced that there was an "incident" in the tunnel and no trains could go through; we were all to be put on shuttle buses.  I looked at my 85-pound contraption of stroller/children/gear for a whole day out and just tried to keep my cheerful face on.  Fortunately the shuttle bus driver let me leave the kids and everything else in the stroller and he got us on the bus using the handicapped lift.  Thank goodness!  It would not have been fun to carry the stroller, the back seat of the stroller, both kids, and all of our stuff onto the bus (with over a hundred impatient people in line behind us.)  So it was a little more adventure than we'd planned for, but I still declare it a success!