Lilacs and Longview

During the week leading up to Mother's Day, the kids and I took my mom down to Woodland to the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens  It was a decently long drive and the kids were pretty antsy about having to drive so far to a garden. Ben particularly had a bad attitude about it and kept saying it was so dumb to have sit in the car just to go to a garden. BUT at the end of the day, when I asked him what his favorite part of the day was, he excitedly said it was the Lilac Garden. All the kids ended up LOVING it! :)

I tried to get a nice picture of the three kids....but this is the best I got. Silly boys! :)

On the garden property is Hulda's old house and we enjoyed touring it. Her bedroom was so lovely! I could definitely stay a night or two in it! :)

It began sprinkling on us at one point, but they had umbrellas available for guests to use - how fun!

This was my mom's and my favorite variety of lilac, Glory, because of the huge size of the blossoms - so beautiful!

Abby was intrigued with the fairy statue and wanted to see what book she was reading. :)

After the gardens, we drove a bit of the way home and then stopped off in Longview. The night before I had been searching on the internet for some other interesting things to see in that area so as to make our trip and gas more "worth it." As I researched, I found out all about the fascinating history of Longview (a planned city by timber baron Robert.A. Long). I realized that I had never actually gone into Longview before in my whole life for all the hundreds of times I've passed by on I-5 and the few times I've been along the bypass highway (to head directly into Oregon from that point), which follows commercial and industrial businesses and is really quite ugly and unimpressive. The actual downtown and majority of the city is absolutely gorgeous and full of history and interesting tidbits. The kids were especially excited for me to tell them the story of Longview's famous squirrel bridge, called the Nutty Narrows Bridge, and to see the squirrel statue and bridge itself.

Looking up at the bridge (hard to see in photo)

We then walked across the park to the historic Longview Public Library. What a gorgeous building! Robert A. Long took great care to ensure that Longview would be a beautiful town, full of cultural opportunities - a tradition that has continued to this day. Again, such a surprise to me! I will never think of Longview in the same way!

Story time with Grandma!

After doing a drive-by of several other historical buildings, like the newly restored Columbia Theater that has a fascinating history of being saved by a volcano (read about it here) and the gorgeous Monticello Hotel, the first permanent building built in Longview (read about it here). I would have liked to have explored the historical buildings a bit more, but I'd promised the kids we'd visit Longview's most famous park, Lake Sacajawea, which included a Japanese Garden and it was getting much later in the day than we had planned! On the way to the park, we traveled through Longview's planned neighborhoods - everything perfectly lined up, all lots the same size, all houses built within the same few years (1920s-30s), and every street lined with trees! The City of Longview maintains over 16,000 trees! It was so pretty.

We were extremely disappointed that the Japanese Garden, though free, had actual hours and was closed by time we got there. :( But we still enjoyed the park and found a very fun play area right alongside the lake. It was an absolutely perfect sunny evening and the kids did not want to leave. In fact, Ben was pretty insistent that we needed to move to Longview. :)

I was so glad to have visited and learned about this historic and beautiful city that I'd by-passed all these years. Who knew such a gem was located just off the freeway all this time?!