Samantha Farbman - Blog: July 2007

Heading to Portland Oregon

Last weekend Gregg and I headed to Portland Oregon - by car - for the wedding of Laura Snellgrove and Josh Good - two people who are nothing by quality, and who I would transplant in SLC if I could.
Gregg, champ that he is drove the whole way both there and back! I offered to take over, but he was a man on a mission!

Though I don't adore, by any stretch of imagination, single day really long road trips (how times have changed now that I've driven these roads through and through!)....I DO love the Columbia River Gorge Area - it is one of the most calming and beautiful places in the Pacific NW, and one of my favorites in general, country wide.

Gregg and I checked out Wachella falls, a short 1 mile in, 1 mile out hike, and quickly stopped to admire a large dam on the Columbia. Gregg was hating the Pac NW moisture, but I was enjoying escaping the 100+ degree heat smothering us in Utah. it did however feel about 80 percent soggier in Oregon, than we have gotten used to in dry deserty Salt Lake.

Camping in National Forest near La Grange, OR, on the way to Portland

Morningtime - haven't camped in awhile, I was fearing bears all night.

Wachella Falls

Big ol' Damn

PATAGONIA-HO!!!!!!

Finally, Samantha will be going to PATAGONIA!! and no silly people, I do not mean the outlet store in SLC, I mean the southernmost region of chile and argentina!!! To reward Gregg for all his hardwork, I suprised him with a ticket I got with frequent flyer miles, and then I bought myself an accompanying ticket (so I can collect airline miles, of course!)..

It just sounds cool, don't it...P a t a g o n i a....
I have never been to South America, so this will be super sweet to go somewhere so far off the map. It is like the Alaska of South America! ...And we all know how I feel about Alaska!

Greggers and I fly to Buenos Aires in the end of Oct for three weeks! I really want to go down to South America for longer, long enough to learn Spanish - but he have a lot going on here, with the house, with my work....

But, we plan on taking off for AWHILE next year, and we think we have narrowed it down to two destinations to choose from - South America, or Asia. HA! so vague....

We will be int he southernmost town in the world - hiking in some of the most splendiferious terrain in the world, and hopefully penguin viewing on the Argentian coast.

A map of glorious patagonia

oooooohhhhhh

We plan on seeing some of these....

The Perito Moreno Glacier - on our planned itinerary...
(ahhhhhhhh!)

Mt. Fitz-Roy - also on our to see list. w.o.w.

If anyone is happening to be in that region this fall, let me know!

Friends!

Hello everyone!

Recently I had a few friends come through town, which was great, because we only know a few people in town. Kaiti from Seattle came, and my friend Jake who I met in Israel rolled through with his girlfriend. Our paths crossed again a week later when I was in Portland for a wedding. Yay!

We got out a small amount around town, including a hike in the floral mountain meadows up at Brighton Mountain.

hello.

Gregg and I hiking on Brighton Mountain

Kaiti and me hiking

One of many floral meadows of Utah

Lake on Brighton Mtn

More flowers on Brighton

Me and Gregg, Kaitlin and Jake

House Updates!

Gregg is just about done with the foundation process - it was expensive, arduous and I am sure he is elated that it is nearly complete! He had a little help along the way from Kaiti and his brother Paul. He has just finished tearing down the-pre-existing addition to our house (all 7 feet in width of it)...and hopefully we will be ready to start framing the new addition when my father comes in a week!

We are finding that we have been terrible with paperwork and organization, so I am going to make and effort to organize the project to make it easier on Greggoire. its coming together though - even though the heat is anywhere between 95 and 105 degrees daily!

The rebar inside the foundation

My dirty feet after minutes of helping -
sort of reminds me of a certain roommate in Israel!

Gregg and Paul building up the foundation

Paul roasting in the heat!

Colorado, again!

Back again in Denver last week for a wedding! Met up with our friends Kevin and LeiLei there - I had never met the groom, and nont of us had met the bride - who was about 6 months pregnant. - (they swear she got pregnant a week after the engagement) We all explored downtown Denver (I was surprised and delighted to find they have a fantastic Art Museum, which is called DAM) - Denver was incredibly interesting architecturally - especially in the area surrounding the museum.

After the wedding - we headed about an hour out of the city and went white water rafting in the mountains. It was my pretty much my first time doign this (aside fromt eh mild water of Israel's Jordan River - it was exhilarating in 38 degree water! It took several hours to bring my numb hands back to life.

I have still not gotten around to bringing my disposable waterproof camera to the camera place yet for development. Thankfully, this time we flew to Colorado - a quick 1 or so hour jump over there from SLC (much quicker then the 8 hour drive a few weeks ago).