The first time we went to Oregon, spring clouds hung over the emerald forests blanketing the foothills of snow-capped Mount Hood. It rained most of the time that we were there but we’d come prepared. Our rain jackets and big dumb hats protected us from the rain that managed to make it through the thick canopy of ancient Douglas firs. Our footfalls were silent on the trail, soft with decaying wood and fir needles.

Old Salmon River Trail trailhead is eight parking spots off of a barely used Forest Service road. The deep switchbacks of the trail led us down towards the whooshing of the Salmon River, past fallen trees rich with multi-colored mushrooms and colonies of bracken ferns up to my waist. Green, everywhere. Lichen crawled up weathered stones, delicate wildflowers hung like little bells over the trail.

And the trees. My god, the trees. Some of them were so tall they must have tickled the ground floor of heaven, so wide that a no picture could do them justice. We’d turn a corner and find another tree bigger than the last, standing at the base, with our heads craned back, trying to grasp just how big, how tall, how ancient. I wondered what those Oregonian hikers made of us, hugging trees and weeping at the beauty of the forest.

We took my parents and The Baby with us the next year, excited to show them paradise. We rode a train through wine country on the northside of Mount Hood. Alex and I drove to an observatory in Washington, stopping at every overlook to marvel at the unbelievable geology of Columbia River Gorge. We ate dinner in the backyard around a firepit while the cool evening air kissed our faces. The setting sun glinted through the trees, casting choreographed shadows on the verdant flora.

Perfection.

This year, we booked a ten-day stay, our longest yet. Without the help of my parents, the plane ride was a bit of a struggle with all of The Baby’s gear-the car seat, the stroller, the Bipap, the diaper bag, and, well, The Baby. It was a full day of travel, a circus of managing tube feeds and diaper changes while carrying the weight of our son’s survival on our backs through narrow plane aisles.

But we made it.

We stopped to grocery shop at the Safeway in Astoria, a city right at the confluence of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean. We wandered toward the water, finally stopping to gape at the view from a grocery store parking lot.

“Damn,” I muttered.

Our AirBnB backed up to Sunset Beach. A sandy trail led us through an ocean of green seagrass, murmuring in the breeze. The first picture I took captured the calmness I felt as I gazed over the grass to the ocean and picturesque mountains beyond. It wasn’t until we got home that I spotted the tiny blackspot near the center of the picture, a whale breaching out of the water.

The Oregon Coast just got better and better. Butted up against ancient coastal forests, cliffs dropped to soft sandy beaches. During low tide, the ocean retreated to reveal tidepools with multi-colored anemones and sea limpets. Orange and purple starfish clung to the rough rocks, huddled together against the cool air. Tiny crabs scuttled sideways, clacking their miniscule claws at us.

During high tide, the sea crashed against magnificent rocks that dominated the landscape.

We took a coastal train ride to a working fishing and crabbing village, the ocean breeze running through our hair in the open air car. In the evenings, after Aidan settled in his tent, Alex and I would walk to Sunset Beach, picking up shells and pieces of driftwood, smooth from being battered by salt and sand.

The second half of the trip took us back toward Mount Hood, to a little cabin in the woods by a river. From the back deck, we watched a duck bob in and out of the river current , white water rafting in its natural habitat. While we boiled in the hot tub, meteors shot across the night sky, framed by trees reaching toward the heavens. Alex surprised me with a private plane ride over Mount Hood, Mount Adams, and Mount Saint Helens, devastation from the 1980 eruption still visible. We drove through the high desert to Crater Lake National Park, where we marveled at the unreal color of some of the purest water in the world–a lazuline gem nestled in the ancient caldera of a dormant volcano.

I could go on and on, but I won’t.

Someone asked me what my favorite part was and I laughed.

Crater Lake was a three-and-a-half hour drive from our Mount Hood cabin, which made it quite the day trip. An hour and a half into the drive, we decided to stop and stretch our legs.

“Let’s pull off at this rest stop. It has five stars on Google,” I told Alex, directing him off the highway toward the Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint.

The clean restrooms had two adult changing stations, a sight so rare that it was the first time I’d ever seen them in public. We walked toward a low wall in the distance, enjoying the fresh air. When we got to the wall, I peeked over and muttered, “What the hell?”

The man next to me laughed as we peered down into a ravine three-hundred feet deep. A small river wound it’s way through the bottom. A picturesque bridge spanned the small canyon, snow covered mountains peeked out of the background.

I told Alex, “We could turn around right now, not even go on to Crater Lake, and this day would not be wasted.”

Maybe it’s weird that a rest stop was one of my favorite parts of the trip, but I liked it precisely because it’s so emblematic of my experience of Oregon. Hidden surprises seem to be everywhere- just around the corner, just across the parking lot, in this random rest stop off the side of the highway. You never know what you’ll discover.

It feels like a dream.

Alas, real life beckons. We schlepped all of our shit back to Dallas, laden by suitcases filled with seashells, driftwood, and a crab shell with barnacles that look like googly eyes. When the automatic doors slid open at the airport and the fiery heat of a Texas summer slammed into me, my shoulders slumped. Back to reality.

We’re tethered to Texas by too many things and so living Oregon remains on the list, a fragile hope that will hopefully bloom into reality sometime in the future.

For now, we dream. We decorate our house with treasures from Oregon, we paint our favorite places, we obsessively look at houses on Zillow that we aren’t ready to buy.

It’s nice, you know, to have a dream. A dream of someday living in a place where nature throws unending surprise parties, where we could walk into the backyard and fish for salmon in the river or nap in a hammock strung between two trees so tall that you can’t even see the top. A dream where our life is quiet and peaceful.

On hard days, when the daily grind has battered us and our emotions are raw, we look at vacation pictures and talk about river cabins for sale like we’re serious about them. It keeps us hopeful, this dream.

The dream of Oregon, someday.