Vacation: Portland

In the middle of our week in Seattle, we ducked down to Portland, Oregon, for two brief nights. Before heading south to Portland, though, we rented a car and took a little detour. We pointed our car north to get on the Kingston ferry, which took us over to the tippy-top of the Olympic Peninsula. It's not very populated on the Olympic Peninsula, so much of the drive looked like so, with tall evergreens and yellow ribbons of invasive Scotch Broom. Oh, and gorgeous, steely blue lakes. Forks, Washington, the small town and setting for the Twilight books happens to be on the western edge of the Olympic Peninsula, which you'll drive through to get where you're going.

What a depressing little town. Not nearly as romantic and quaint as I had imagined it to be from reading the book (I stopped at book one, unable to stomach Bella's dependency issues). Trust me, if you lived in Forks, and a sparkly vampire showed up, you too would want to jump his cold, cold bones. There's just simply nothing else to do there!

Edward will show you to the ladies' bathroom at Forks' Chinese restaurant!The whole reason we went hours and hours out of our way from Seattle to Portland was to hike around the Olympic National Forest. We chose to romp around the Hoh Rainforest. It's absolutely gorgeous! Lush and green every where you look. Massive spruces, firs, and hemlocks shoot above the fern and moss-covered ground. It also rains in the rain forest pretty regularly. Go figure.After hiking in the rain forest, we headed a bit south to our home for the night, Lake Quinault Resort, a little inn with ten or so rooms set on the north shore of Lake Quinault. This place was so freakin' cute with cabin-like rooms lined up along a long deck covered with wisteria and potted flowers.
It was raining and misting that evening (we were still pretty much in the rain forest), so at times the lake vanished before our eyes even though it was just on the other side of the foxglove covered ridge just steps beyond our room and deck. We enjoyed a dinner on the deck of cheap Washington wine and Doritos from the corner store down the road. Absolutely perfect!
On the way from Lake Quinalt to Portland the next morning, we saw a roadside stand for cherries, so we stopped to experience Washington cherries while actually in Washington. These weren't life changing.Our first stop in Portland was for lunch at some of the food cart pods in downtown. A post on food carts is coming!
And, yeah, we did Voodoo Doughnuts, too, like good tourists. A post on that is also in the works.
We stopped in Powell's Books, a gigantic independent book store that takes up an entire city block in downtown Portland. These types of places overwhelm me, and I can never think of what to look for, so I just wandered aimlessly. The sides of their carts for re-shelving books have different themes and doodles. Above is a kitty cart!

We didn't really have much of an agenda for our two nights in Portland, other than to just show up and spend some time with the boy's friend who lives in Portland, which we did by hanging in bars, restaurants, and back yards. We picked our friend up after work in downtown, then drove out to his house in a neighborhood north of Portland.
Portland is über-cute! Every house has a flower garden or vegetable garden out front, and is just so damn cute (like the random house above) that you could pinch it. Houses have porches! How I miss porches.You can also have backyard chickens in Portland. These are our friends' chickens. They also had a yard with a vegetable garden out front, and a vegetable garden in the back.

I was really digging the vibe of Portland. It's a city with a downtown large enough that you feel like you're in a real city, and has quaint neighborhoods of cute houses (with yards and porches!) anchored by retail and restaurant districts. Portland reminded me a lot of Austin, Texas, but obviously with a different climate.

Speaking of climate, in those two nights we were in Portland, the weather did get to me. Even though it didn't rain at all when we were there, it was cloudy and cold. The mornings were in the 50s, and didn't warm up to the low 70s until the afternoon. For me, that is just not acceptable in the summer. My hands were freezing, and I was grumpy. When I found a patch of sun, I'd stop and soak up as much of it as I could. I don't think I'd survive in Portland. We stopped by the Portland's famous International Rose Test Garden one chilly morning. I hate roses (I have to take care of them, and, it's true, every rose has its thorn!), but even I, a rose-hater, appreciated the over 8000 immaculately cared for roses in this free-to-the-public garden.
Right next to the rose garden, is the Portland Japanese Garden, a very nice traditional Japanese Garden that is worth the admission fee.

A bit down the road from the rose and Japanese garden is the Hoyt Arboretum, which is free to enter. Go here if you like strolling or running on wooded trails with botanical names tagged on trees.
Every last Thurday of the month there is a Last Thursday festival with artists, performers, and food vendors lined along, oh, maybe ten or more blocks of Alberta St. This event is huge. Thousands of people. Some serious freak flags flying! I might get tired of this event after a couple of visits, and certainly if I lived right off Alberta St. (thousands of people also need to park somewhere), but it was fun that once.

Above is a Prince tribute band at Last Thursday. The singer had the look and body size down, except he was Prince's not-quite-so-sexy cousin. I'd probably still do him.
The morning we woke up to head north for Seattle, the forecast was for "abundant sunshine" (that's what the news kept excitedly repeating), so we decided to take the hour detour off highway 5 up to Mount St. Helens. We were warned that on cloudy or rainy days the view of the volcano can be cruddy, but with "abundant sunshine, " the view was perfect!

I highly recommend you stop by the Johnston Observation Ridge, which is situated directly across from the side of Mount St. Helens that was blasted off in the 1980 volcano eruption. The Johnston Observation Ridge visitors center is very nice, with an engrossing movie (volcanologists were monitoring the volcano and knew of it's impending activity, so there is plenty of footage of the blast and subsequent destruction), and state-of-the-art exhibits relating tales of survival and tragedy. Amazing! Very glad we stopped.