Our Portland Trip

We love Portland. Seriously, we could move there tomorrow and be perfectly happy. The weather was in the 80's with a cool down to the 50's at night. A great escape from the Texas heat and luckily not the normal overcast and rainy weather that they are known for.

We stayed on the Willamette River and Teri traded in our King sized bed for 2 full size beds and a view of the river. Normally I wouldn't have gone for this trade but considering it was our first baby free vacation (Thanks Mayme!) it was appropriate. This is a very outdoorsy place where everyone rides their bikes. More on the "green" city mentality later.

Since our body clocks were on Texas time, our food strategy was to take advantage of happy hour food and drink specials. This could also be called the Early Bird Special. It worked out great and we got to sample lots of great food without paying a lot for it. One night we ate at the Kennedy School which is an elementary school that has been converted into a hotel with a restaurant and several small bars. It is so very cool! The restaurant is in the old cafeteria, the front desk is the Principal's office and they have a movie theater in the auditorium. We watched Sunshine Cleaning and our tickets were $3.00.

While driving to the Kennedy School were kept seeing signs for a neighborhood garage sale extravaganza. Since it has become our habit to walk on Sat. morning and stop at the local sales this seemed a fun way to get to know the local Portland. We ended up buying so much stuff we had to get a box and fly it home. Our big score was the Tupperware. Yes I said Tupperware. So one of the sales we went to was a group of lesbians. We talked to them briefly and told them of our Tupperware purchase and the cargo flight to get it home and one of them said, "I think it's great that you're going to use the old Tupperware but can you imagine the carbon footprint on it after the flight." I said, "Spoken by a true Portlander"

The big event of the vacation was white water rafting down the White Salmon River. Since we didn't take any pictures while rafting here is a stock photo and then two that I took on the drive there.

To wrap up our trip we ate dinner at the Portland City Grill on the 30th floor of a downtown building. The food was great and so was the view. After that we went to the famed VooDoo Doughnut, their claim to fame is weird doughnut flavors but since there was a line out the door we stopped for a pre-doughnut drink at a dirty seedy bar with great people watching. This is where we meet "Jimmy" and then got our Maple Bacon and the Chick-O-Stick Doughnut