Sep 25: Ashland to Portland, inc. Eugene

We allocated this day, a Saturday, to the five hour drive from Ashland to Portland. We grabbed breakfast in our hotel, then began the drive north. I took out my camera to take pictures.

The drive up interstate five is beautiful, passing through forested hills and states parks. On the way north, I forced us to detour a couple of times to view some of the covered bridges Oregon is famous for. We stopped in four towns, viewing perhaps half a dozen historic covered bridges. Most covered bridges look like a barn over a creek. We decided we didn't appreciate covered bridges. In fact, the bridge I liked the most that we saw during our drive was a narrow, sleek, swinging pedestrian bridge (with a "no swinging" sign :> ), not a historic bridge.

We stopped to visit the Saturday Market at the University of Oregon in Eugene. The University of Oregon has a Berkeley vibe, but is less dense, more car friendly, and lacking homeless people.

I found the market more interesting than Portland's Sunday Market (which I visited the previous week). It's also older than the one in Portland. We saw lots of stuff for sale, including arts, crafts, wood-turning (including one stall devoted to polished wood cribbage boards), t-shirts (including one stall specializing in shirts with birds), and tie-dye (we even saw some underwear for sale). There also was an attached extensive farmers market. (It even had locally grown lemongrass!) Finally, there was a large food court, and also multiple stages for musicians scattered around.

It was shockingly hot. Although there are other things to see in Eugene, we had no energy to explore more.

From Eugene we drove to Portland, stopping at the outlet mall in Woodburn on the way. The outlet mall has lots of shops, including Under Armour (which I didn't think did direct-to-consumer sales).

In Portland, Di Yin persuaded me (without great difficulty other than my desire for variety) to return to Apizza Scholls, the pizza joint we enjoyed so much in Portland the previous week.