Portland

July 2013

My coworker was backing out of time off he had initially decided to take for a Fourth of July weekend and asked me if I would like to claim it instead. Sure, why not! It took a while for me to figure out what I wanted to do or who I would want to do whatever with, but I eventually landed on a road trip north to Portland. Hooray for spontaneity!

DAY ONE
My lovely mother agreed to go with me so that I wouldn't have to travel alone (I'm so not ready for that). It took about 9 hours to get there, driving through flat planes of farmland and weaving through mountains and past Shasta in Northern California. Through one stretch of Oregon, we were startled to find what looked like tumbleweed floating through the air. We were very confused. There were tufts of casually floating grass everywhere in the sky. I don't know either. But you'll know when you're really in Oregon because everything is suddenly so green. It rains much more in Oregon than it does in California, so the plants are very happy and they show it. I would love to live in Oregon some day, maybe in retirement.

We arrived earlier than we expected, so we decided to let our first visit be to Multnomah Falls, a couple of miles east from Portland. It's a very popular destination, and since it was also July 4th, it was a holiday and therefore very crowded. A really cool place where you can view the wonders of nature (a very tall waterfall) without having to hike at all to see it. It's just off of the freeway with loads of parking, a gift shop, and a cafe. There's the option to hike up to the top of the waterfall too, but I wasn't about to go up that far.

Afterwards, we dropped off our stuff at the hotel and visited downtown's charming Pearl District with both high end indie stuff and homeless people areas. Not really sure what to think about that, but it was really hard to find a place to eat on the Fourth of July.

DAY TWO
The next morning, we got up early to make our way to the famous Voodoo Doughnuts. A line out the door didn't surprise me, but it did surprise me that the line also started at the door, so it was pretty misleading. The doughnuts were well worth the wait, as they were superiorly delicious and creative flavor-wise. Their main staple would the the Voodoo doughnut, a raspberry filled in the shape of a voodoo doll and shanked with a pretzel stick. The other must-have is the maple bacon (oh my god) bar. Yes, bacon. On the maple bar. It was like eating a bacon maple sweet pancake breakfast to go. I really liked the butterfinger doughnut, too.

Next we visited Washington Park where the Japanese garden and Rose garden reside among a crap ton of other things. The hills in this park are forested with these tall canopy trees that are amazing to be under. It feels very secluded. Roses don't interest me very much, but the Japanese garden was immaculate. I couldn't put my camera down!

If you want a great view of the city of Portland, visit Pittock Mansion just up the road from Washington Park. There's a nice area with benches to sit there for a while, or you could pay to go inside the mansion, which I didn't bother doing myself.

Leaving Pittock Mansion, we weren't really sure what to do next, but were heading west anyway, and eventually thought, hey, why not keep going all the way to the coast? The drive was very pretty and hilly and forested, and we eventually made it to Seaside where we got out of the car and visited some of the shops along the beach. A huge statue of Lewis and Clark alerted us to the fact that this very spot was the end of their adventure across the country.

We didn't want to drive back the same way, so we headed a little bit North to Astoria first before going east again. My mom told me that this town Astoria was where they filmed the movie The Goonies. Pretty sweet, but I didn't really recognize anything in particular. By the time we got home we were pooped, especially my mom who prefers to be the driver.

DAY THREE
In the morning we visited Portland's famous Saturday Market. Lots of craft and food booths pop up all over downtown along the Willamette river and you could literally spend hours there trying to visit all the tents. My feet definitely hurt and we had to quit early. Some of my favorite booths involved woodworking or blown glass pieces, but my mom's favorite was a guy who made chains and inspired her to learn how to make them herself.

Our last adventure in Portland was stationed at the Leach Botanical Garden. The garden feels very secluded, but it's actually in the middle of town, which is kind of disorienting. It's very beautiful, and often hosts wedding receptions, but allows visitors to tour the grounds where a stream cuts through forested areas. If Oregon wasn't so beautifully lush and green, it probably wouldn't have felt as magical as it did.

We made our way down to Salem that day in order to spare us an hour of driving the following day on our way back home. And good thing too, because our bed in Portland had a bed-ridden-morbidly-obese-man-sized dent on my mom's side.

The Tutu's

My paternal grandparents spent a lot of time with my brother and me when we were kids since we were their only ever grandkids. I'm sure at some point they had insisted on us calling them the Tutu's, because that's all I've ever done. Grandma and Grandpa Tutu. I'm under the impression it has a Hawaiian meaning. We all did take a trip to Hawaii once when I was too young to remember, but my grandpa tends to bring up often that I would tug on his shirt and squeal "ocean!" to him. He taught me a Hawaiian handshake I still remember. I also ate sand. Because toddlers eat everything. I learned my lesson.


We did travel many places together but spent most of the summers at their home in Arizona where we swam nearly every day. They tried to teach us tennis, but I was always terrible at it, lobbing the ball almost over the back fence every time I bothered trying. My grandma later told me when I was more grown up that I had once said to her that she was my favorite family member because she always gave me what I wanted. That probably meant Kraft macaroni & cheese and sour cream & onion flavored Pringles.


We took road trips from California up to Washington and over to Montana where my uncle's cabin is, listening to sing-alongs all the way there, which we loved. My grandparents used to live in Washington so we stayed a few days with a friend of theirs who had a house on one of the lakes near Seattle and a small yelping dog. We also stopped at what it felt like was either in Spokane or somewhere in Idaho at a farm with some cows I had scared and some kittens I had cuddled. Over in Montana, we stayed for 8 weeks of the summer attending a kids camp only to have our mom crush us in a suffocating death hug when we stepped off of our return flight.


My grandpa took us out on a boat to fish and enjoy the sun, and they got us bicycles to ride over the gravel roads and left a sprinkler on in the backyard for us to run through in our bathing suits. My brother even witnessed a moose stick its head in through the window! Montana is beautiful in the summer, but one winter we enjoyed our first white Christmas. We took out some sleds to find good hills to slide down, though I remember being very timid about participating.


Twice we drove down into Mexico to a place called San Carlos. My grandparents owned a condo there and it has a swimming pool we used pretty much every day, too. My brother and I noticed a bunch of dead rollie pollies on the bottom of the pool that we decided to collect and pile onto the edge of the pool, only to be distraught by their sudden disappearance the following morning. One time my grandpa took us to the beach where my brother and I swam and he fished. When I was swimming a bit far out, his hook caught my skin and I panicked but unleashed it off of me and didn't bother telling anyone about it because I was too embarrassed.

While we were away from home, my grandma would help me write letters to my mom to let her know how and what we were doing. She's the one who taught me how to write postal information on an envelope. My mom kept all of my letters apparently, stashed in a drawer in her bedroom among other mementos from my childhood. We're a very sentimental, nostalgic family.

PS: It's my kittens' first birthday tomorrow. I wanted to get them tiny party hats, but couldn't find even regular party hats anywhere.