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.

Sep 26: Assorted Portland

The previous night we stayed in the Red Lion Hotel on the River, a bit north of Portland. This morning we decided to exploit our proximity to the river with a morning stroll. I brought my camera to take pictures. We walked along the waterfront near our hotel (on Hayden Island, viewing the Columbia River).

After our walk, we drove downtown to explore Portland's food cart scene for lunch. We saw a few different pods (the term for a gathering of food trucks). We knew most trucks would be closed on Sunday, but we figured enough would be open to give us a sense of the scene. Indeed, I enjoyed seeing the variety of foods and variety of ad hoc stands they were being sold out of, even if most were shut.

We did a few errands (REI, Ross, etc.), then checked into our hotel for this night, the Park Lane Inn, the same hotel we stayed in the previous Sunday. It was inexpensive and perfectly nice; we decided to return. One reason we headed to this part of town early was to walk around the area. (Di Yin went running the previous week and was impressed with the sights and wanted to show them to me.)

We walked around the historic King's Hill district and its large, fancy houses. I recorded our walking route. We happened upon an open house and stopped in. It was surprisingly large; I would be happy with part of one floor. Built in 1906, it still had its neat, original-style wavy windows. (The old way of making glass panes by hand left them with waves.)

We also walked through Washington Park, which abuts King's Hill. Washington Park was very leafy and green, with lots of ivy. Sorry, by this point I was sick of taking pictures and didn't end up taking any in the park itself.

Incidentally, it was threatening to rain all day, but never rained.

For a refresher after our walk, we followed a friend's tip and headed to Cacao, a shop that specializes in chocolate and chocolate drinks. It selectively sources its own chocolate and truffles from various manufacturers and distributors. It's a fun store to browse to see what it chooses to sell and how it displays certain items together. Some of its items are odd, such as bacon-flavored chocolate and chocolate-smelling body lotion.

Next we went to Powell's bookstore, supposedly the largest independent bookstore in the world. The store is so big (bigger than other bookstores), they rightly give you a map. It feels so large that they should use the Dewey decimal system.

Nevertheless, I found Powell's disappointing. Incidentally, this was the same reaction as on my first visit to Powell's eight years earlier. Basically, it holds the selection of a good library. I was hoping to buy some obscure books not in my local library systems, but they didn't have any of these. At least I used Powell's to flip through uncommon books, books that are in my local library system but not at my local library, to learn if I wanted to drive to the other library / request that the books be delivered to my library.

For dinner we headed across Portland to the Screen Door, a Southern restaurant. Our fried chicken was some of the best I've ever had, and I'd give the restaurant a solid 3 and happily return.

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.

Sep 20: Portland to Crater Lake

This day was mainly devoted to driving from Portland to Crater Lake, our home for the next few days. I took pictures. It was another comfortable weather day.

The day began with a drive across downtown Portland, a drive which took all of 15 minutes, passing through Historic Irvington on the way. I thought the lawns in this part of town were nicely manicured, landscaped, and precisely and prettily arranged, but Di Yin said they were nothing compared to the area near Washington Park she went running in that morning. She promised to show me the area she was talking about on our return to Portland.

On a tip, we ate brunch at Helser's on Alberta, then began our trek southward. On the way, we stopped by safeway and radio shack to pick up supplies for camping, and, later, stopped by a camping store for a ground tarp when we realized it'd recently rained in the vicinity of Crater Lake.

Our long drive to Crater Lake brought us past fields (cows, sheep), farms, lakes, small towns, and through the Cascade Mountain range and various National Forests. Our path brought us occasionally along train tracks and on perfectly straight roads. We also passed a controlled burn of small brush piles. We almost outran the rain on the way to Crater Lake, but didn't quite; it caught up to us at points. Happily, the rain stopped geographically before Crater Lake, and we never saw rain in Crater Lake during our stay.

At the north end of Crater Lake National Park, there was a shockingly treeless (given the rest of our drive) pumice desert. It was pretty when we drove through during golden hour, but we decided we didn't have time to stop for pictures if we wanted to make it to our campsite by around sunset. Sadly, we never drove through the desert again.

The drive along the Crater Lake's Rim was majestic, both looking toward the lake and away from it toward the valleys in the other direction. It was also scary due to steep drop-offs and lack of barriers.

At the campground (Mazama Village, the park's main campground), we claimed a site and bought firewood. (Unlike some National Parks, it wasn't free.) We had trouble starting a fire and ended up getting help from friendly neighbors. (They let us light a log in their pit.) We ate a dinner of bagels (while waiting for our fire to start) and leftover pizza (which we warmed above the flame, but it wasn't good--it was soggy). Because we brought a lantern this time, we found it easier to cook at night than usual. Though better than nothing, I decided it wasn't bright enough and plan to get something better next time.

Bundled up, we survived the cold night. The inflatable 2.5 inch thick camping pads helped. They weren't great, but they weren't bad and certainly better than our usual sleeping pads.

Sep 19: Portland

The trip began with me packing early on the morning. Then, Di Yin and I took the Caltrain to the bus to San Jose airport. I'd never made it to SJC via public transit before, but it turned out to be smooth sailing all the way.

We flew out of San Jose Airport's brand new terminal B, which was pretty nice and had the wonderful amenity that most seats in the waiting area have power outlets.

We flew Horizon. Perhaps a reflection of Portland's brewing traditions, Horizon served as one of the drink options a complimentary microbrew. It was okay.

We landed, picked up our luggage and our rental car, drove downtown, and started exploring. At this point I began taking pictures.

One place we visited was the Saturday Market. (Yes, I know it was Sunday, but it's also open on Sundays.) In addition to the standard market stuff of clothes, hats (lots of stalls selling these, all rather nice), handbags, accessories (wallets, belts, ...), jewelry, candles, glassware, pottery, woodcarving (even pretty woodwind instruments), metalwork, paintings (some surprisingly good and priced accordingly), photography, etc., there were some novelties too, such as custom-made clay face masks and a stand that would put your face on a garden gnome. See the pictures for the rest. We also found some stages with live music. Finally, as for food, there was the usual market food (philly cheesesteaks, pizza) plus Tibetan, Hawaiian, BBQ, Salvadorian (pupusas), Ethiopian, and Polish (pirogis).

After the market, we wandered around downtown Portland. Di Yin led. We had no grand plan of places to see, but our wandering did (I realize in retrospect) cover most of that section of town. It was perfect weather, a nice temperature to wear long sleeves, a slight breeze, and gentle sunlight.

Right when we decided to stop exploring, it started drizzling. (good timing!) We stopped by REI to prep for our camping trip, and then headed to dinner on the other side of the river. On the way, we drove down Hawthorne, a hip street filled with boutiques and restaurants, including a Mexican school bus food joint (hipper than a taco truck in my opinion) and more. We made plans to walk around the area sometime (though these plans never came to fruition).

We ate at Apizza Scholls, a place I learned about via Anthony Bourdain. We had a great pie. For details, see the lengthy comments by the pictures.

Finally, we checked into our night's hotel, Park Lane Suites & Inn. Complete with hardwood floors, it was perfectly nice.

Portland Overview

From Sunday, September 19, 2010, through Monday, September 27, Di Yin and I traveled around Oregon, mostly visiting Portland, Crater Lake, and Ashland.

Between the twenty-fours I spent in Portland at the beginning of this trip and the two days I spent at the end of the trip, I think I got an accurate impression of the city. I also visited Portland once before, with D in 2002. During that visit, we biked around the city and along the Columbia River. I've aggregated my general observations of Portland into this post; they come mainly from this visit, as my earlier one was so long ago that I don't have many concrete memories of it.

Portland doesn't look much like a city. It doesn't have many tall office buildings and has very few skyscrapers. Also, there's no congestion. The streets, even downtown, are surprisingly uncrowded, both in terms of people and cars. Incidentally, the lack of cars might be explained by Portland discriminating against drivers. For instance, parking is enforced even on Sundays (til 7pm).

Many parts of Portland don't feel like a city either. It feels small: you can get anywhere in Portland in about 10-15 minutes. It's amazing. Also, there are lots of two-lane roads--it feels like Austin in this regard--and consequently doesn't feel dense enough, like there's not enough traffic flowing for it to be a real city.

But, it's like a city in one feature: there are lots of people asking for money, probably more than in all other cities I've visited. Many are not traditional panhandlers but rather people walking around asking for a few bucks to get a hostel. There are, however, also traditional homeless people.

Whether a city or not, Portland is attractive in design and style. Here's a long, dense list of reasons. Read and absorb it slowly; this paragraph is by far the most important in this post. Portland has large, leafy, appealing parks, such as Washington Park, and attractive, upscale neighborhoods, such as King's Hill, Nob Hill, and Irvington. It has many nice green spaces dotted around the city (like London). I've had good experiences with the food, ranging from perfect pizzas to top-notch Southern fried chicken. Plus, it has a vibrant food cart scene downtown. It's pedestrian and bicycle friendly. For instance, one day (Sunday the 26th), we saw that some roads were closed for the Sunday Parkways, a periodic event where they close streets in a big loop and let people mosey along doing whatever (walking, rollerblading, biking, etc.). In general, it feels like a chill town. There's lots of street art. Finally, as an added bonus, the beautiful Columbia River Gorge is just up the interstate a bit.