Sep 27: Portland and the Columbia River Gorge

I did a lot of sightseeing outside this day, a warm and humid Monday. After breakfast at the hotel, I dropped Di Yin off so she could do an interview (the whole excuse for the trip) and headed off to explore Portland's famous Rose Garden, officially named the International Rose Test Garden. Beginning there, I took many pictures. Some, I must say, are fantastic.

On the way to the rose garden, I saw sites that seemed vaguely familiar, giving me a feeling I biked around Washington Park before (the rose garden is in the middle of it), during my visit to Portland in 2002 with D.

I knew I arrived at the gardens when I parked and could smell the roses even before I could see them. The gardens consist of acres upon acres of roses, most in bloom. I wandered through them for a bit over an hour. I saw some people running loops through the gardens, definitely a nice idea.

After seeing the rose gardens, I walked down some streets with houses in (at least according to the map) the middle of Washington Park. The houses were as nice as those we saw walking around King's Hill on the edge of the park the previous day. I also walked to the edge of the Portland's famous Japanese Garden, but couldn't go in because it wasn't yet open.

I picked up Di Yin and we drove around the park, just to see more. Washington Park is a huge, forested park, surprising for being near the center of a city. I was also surprised to find it rather wild, which I think is rather appealing. Incidentally, we found additional attractive, large houses on the park's hills.

We also drove through the Nob Hill district, a fancy district in the same vicinity. Known as the alphabet district, all the streets are (for a change) in alphabetic order. The street names used to be single letters but were extended at some point into whole words, names selected from figures in Portland's history.

I convinced Di Yin that she couldn't leave the Portland area without seeing the Columbia River Gorge. As we drove east toward it, we stopped for lunch at Bunk Sandwiches, another good find.

We drove down the historic Columbia River highway, overlooking the gorge. The landscape--ample greenery, frequent water, and widespread moss, with plains, rolling hills, and mountains all in close proximity--reminded me a bit of Norway. Quite an endorsement.

As I drove, I reflected that I can't believe I biked on this road in 2002. It has narrow lanes, one in each direction, and is so windy that there's little visibility/few places for passing. Plus, there are altitude changes. It couldn't have been an easy ride.

We stopped at a few vista points and also several waterfalls, including Bridal Veil Falls, where we did a hike to the falls and on a river overlook trail, and Multnomah Falls, one the tallest falls in the U.S.

In late afternoon, having seen the most famous section of the gorge, we headed to Portland airport, returned our rental car, and ate dinner. After our flight landed in San Jose, we accidentally took the bus in the wrong direction--we were confused--but figured things out, got on the correct bus, found the Caltrain station, and eventually made it home.