Spring Break 2021: Part III - Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival and Silver Falls State Park

After a few hours of driving the kids needed a play break, so we stopped off in Eugene at Amazon Park playground. It's right next to an outdoor pool, which I was surprised to find open in early April! I needed to stretch my legs too and took a walk along the nearby trails. After burning off some energy we hopped back in the car and drove to Salem for dinner and to check into our hotel. It was our first time eating out as a family in over a year. 

The next day we went to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm. We were only expecting tulips, but to our delight there was a full blown festival with a couple carnival rides and tethered hot air balloons. 

The kids enjoyed playing in the big wooden shoe and and seeing how wooden shoes are made.

The hot air balloon rides were fairly reasonable ($20 per adult, $10 per kid), so we decided to give it a try. Oscar stayed in the long line while I kept the kids busy walking around the tulips and going on a couple of rides. He was in line for about 90 minutes even though we got in line early around 9:30am (we can't complain though, because later on our same balloon had to stop operations and people who'd been in line for over 2 hours were turned away). A woman named Lucy and her two boys were in line in front of us, and we struck up a conversation with her. She told us only this balloon, not the other green one, allowed kids under 12, and that they'd tried to go on a balloon ride here a couple years before but hadn't been able to.

We took videos of Lucy's balloon ride and she took videos for us in return. If you watch the video you'll notice I fell into a ditch accidentally while moving in to get a better shot. I was a little concerned that I might have twisted my ankle, but thankfully I was alright.

Here are Lucy's videos of us and my video looking straight up into the top of the balloon and the fire that powers it.

Here are our videos of our own balloon ride. It was amazing! One day I'd like to go on a non-tethered flight.

There were plenty of great bird's eye views.

Here are our views coming down. You can see Lucy in the picture on the right taking pictures and video of us.

Here are the pictures of our balloon she took from her phone and a couple family pictures of us in front of the balloon at the end of our ride.

After setting down we walked to the other end of the tulips then took the tram back to the festival area.

Here are the kids on Cornado and on the fun slide. We randomly ran into Lucy again and she took a video of the 3 of us coming down together.

The kids' favorite was the bunjee trampoline. They were only able to do it once since it also had a long line, which Oscar waited in while I took the kids on other things and grabbed them some snacks.

Tyler got some serious air on the bunjee trampolines. He was really flying!

Here are pictures from the other side of the farm where the tulips hadn't all bloomed yet. Allison wanted to sit in the shoe again. 

Allison and Oscar went down the slide while Tyler did the pumpkin spinner with some other kids. Then there were just enough tickets for the kids to go down the slide once more. The slide operators were kind enough to let me and Oscar go for free with the kids a few times.

From there we drove down to Silver Falls State Park Trail of 10 Falls. We tried to go to North Falls, but there was no available parking, so we drove to its distant view point a bit farther out. 

We did find parking at winter falls, so we hiked down from there.

Here we are at Middle North Falls. You can't see it all from any one viewpoint, so just stitch these two pictures on the left together in your mind.

The kids had fun going behind the falls.

I continued on all the way to the other side of the falls while Oscar and the kids started hiking back up to the main trail.

Here's a picture from as far as the spur trail would take me.

Drake Falls, Lower North Falls, and Double Falls are all fairly close to Middle North Falls, so we took them there then hiked back up to the car at the winter falls parking lot. The full hike is 10 waterfalls for 10 miles, which we knew the kids would never be able to do, but we saw 7 waterfalls for only about 2.5 miles of hiking.

Allison struggled to hike back up to the car, but she pushed through. We then drove down to South Falls were there was more than enough parking. I've done the hike from both directions and vastly preferred starting from the south first because you see the waterfalls ahead of you as you hike rather than having to crane your head around to look at them. All those people filling up the parking lot at North Falls are missing out on the better hike. 

The kids and I hiked down to where you can go behind the falls then started walking back up.

Oscar hiked down to the base then turned around and still beat us to the top.

We drove back to the hotel from there then had a swimming reservation at 6:00pm. This hotel also limited their pool area to one room for 50 minutes, but at least this time we were able to get a reservation.

After a festival, hiking, and swimming, Allison was so tired she put herself down for the night.

The next morning we stayed at the hotel and packed up until check out at 12:00pm. We then drove to Riverfront park city and let the kids ride on the carousel. We had some time to kill before a 3:00pm reservation at the indoor water park in McMinnville.

The kids ate cotton candy and played on the playground while Oscar and I took turns going on walks along the riverfront.

Wings and Waves was neat because it's built out of a real airplane, the slides were all great fun (the kids especially liked the one that feels like you're being flushed down a toilet), and I like that it's not attached to a hotel resort you have to pay for, like Great Wolf Lodge. However, the kids were pretty vacationed out after the busy day we'd just had. If I hadn't prepaid for a non-refundable reservation and already told the kids we'd be going to an indoor water park, we would have skipped it and come home one day earlier. They had fun there, of course, but we'd done enough already that I don't think they would have missed it if they hadn't known it was an option. If I'd known about the tulip festival and hot air balloon rides in advance I would have just chosen that and not done Wings and Waves. It was fun, but it was also over priced and a bit of a let down. You only got 4 hours for $30 a person plus $12 for the double tube we rented, there were long, slow lines for the big slides, and worst of all they required you have your mask on any time you weren't in the water (they gave you plastic bags to put them in and carry around with you). I don't normally complain about masks, but it was really annoying to have to constantly put them on and take them off ourselves and the kids. Plus it's incredibly humid at an indoor water park, so they were super uncomfortable. 

We drove home from there arriving around 11:30pm. The kids slept well on the drive after we picked up dinner and went right to sleep in their beds at home. It was our first vacation with kids that didn't involve visiting family or going to destination theme parks. We played the trip by ear since I was a little worried the kids would quickly get bored of doing mostly hiking and scenery, but they lasted almost a week, longer than I was expecting. Both kids said it was the best vacation ever. Overall it was a huge success!