Spruce Goose

Since we don't like to start our wine tasting until early afternoon, we had the whole morning to explore the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum where Howard Hughes' all wood "Spruce Goose" is now housed. The museum is actually three buildings, one housing the Spruce Goose along with numerous other aircraft, one an I-Max theater and the third is the space museum. The fourth building in the complex is the Wings and Waves Waterpark which has two water slides exiting from an actual 747 airliner located on the roof of the enclosed water playground.

Our family had been thru the Spruce Goose when she was housed in Long Beach, CA alongside the Queen Elizabeth II cruise ship so it was fun to see it again in her new setting. There were lots of other aircraft from the very early days up to present times. Some were actual planes and others were reproductions or models. We skipped the movies in the theatre but did take in the space museum which had a complete history of outer space flight by all countries involved - US, Germany and Russia. It was all quite interesting.

After our picnic lunch we headed to the wineries. Our first stop was at Archery Summit Winery then to Domaine Serene. Both of these wineries are in the Dundee AVA and, personally, I think we don't care for that wine. It seemed to taste like dirt, limestone and was very acidic. Our last winery stop was at Roco Winery. The young lady who waited on us was originally from Kansas City and attended school at MU. I tasted one wine there that I liked but the grapes were not from their vineyard. John liked the taste of their Private Stash 2011 and may order some at a later time.

On our way back to the RV we stopped at the Carlton Farms Meat market and got what we hope will be really good bacon, pork chops and a monster rib steak. By the time we fought rush hour traffic to get to the RV, we had to turn right around and head to Joel Palmer Restaurant for our excellent dinner! Best mushroom tart, mushroom soup and mushroom and filet stroganoff we have ever had! Plus an excellent bottle of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.