Portland, Oregon Family Time!

Hi all, Dianne here.  We had a busy time with family last week, so our blogs are a bit behind.  We’ll try to remedy that now; Roger and I are both plugging away on blogs so that we can get caught up. This first blog entry is mine, so here goes….

A week ago Sunday we left Fort Stevens State Park and made a mad dash to Columbia River RV Park in Portland, which is very near the Portland International Airport.  As we drove the RV toward Portland, two airplanes were also making their way there, one from Florida and the other from Los Angeles.  We all arrived within an hour of each other!  The girls met up and checked in to a hotel near the airport (we always get Robyn a hotel room because she’s allergic to dogs and cats). Amanda, our other daughter, stayed with her sister in the hotel and our granddaughter, Kaia, stayed with “Meemaw & PopPop” in the motor home.

Bandido and Tequila were very happy to get reacquainted with Kaia!

We were all hungry, so first thing was a meal at The Deck restaurant on a floating dock in a marina on the Columbia River. 

Sisters!

Amanda met up with a friend from college and got a taste of some Portland night life, while the rest of us called it an early night.  We had a long list of things we wanted to see and do the next day, our only full day in Portland.

First on the list was to eat breakfast at Pine State Biscuits, a “must do” recommended by Robyn’s boyfriend Atul.  I promise not to show photos of every meal we ate together, but wow, get a load of breakfast:

Fried chicken, gravy, bacon, and egg on a biscuit (Kaia’s breakfast choice) and check out my biscuits and gravy with egg-over-easy on top:

Definitely an experience not to be missed!!  Thank you, Atul!

Mount Hood was out!

After breakfast we made our way downtown and signed up for a walking tour of Portland.  

While we waited for our 2:00 tour time, we made a stop in the famous Powell Book Store to browse around. 

The bookstore is so large, encompassing an entire city block with multiple floors, that large signs direct you to color-coded rooms of books in different categories.   Powell's shelves used and new books together, so that you can easily find a book, then choose which you'd rather buy, new or used.  I ended up with a stack of paperbacks (used, of course). 

At 2:00 we met up with our tour group outside the Hilton Hotel.  Our tour guide, Dianne, was excellent and gave us a good flavor of the city.  There are bicycle lanes everywhere,

car chargers, even solar-powered waste bins along the street that automatically compact the trash.  Rush hour began while we were just ending the tour, and the streets filled with bicycles and folks obviously on their way home from work, work clothes in backpacks and exercise clothes donned for the ride home.

This building shows trompe-l’oeil art.  It is actually a flat building except for the recessed area in the center.

In one of the downtown parks we found the largest grove of Dutch Elm trees in the United States.  Our guide explained that the Dutch Elm disease that obliterated the elm trees in the eastern half of the country didn’t make it all the way to Oregon. 

This building was designed by Michael Graves, who also designed kitchen wares for Target.  


 In front of the building is the second-largest hammered copper statue in the U.S. (largest is the Statue of Liberty).  Here is Portlandia, kneeling down to welcome visitors to the city:

    
Both of our daughters were intrigued by this large artwork that invited you to “have a seat”.  They of course proceeded to ham it up with the statue.

In this photo, our guide, Dianne, was explaining how this statue from the 1980s is a good way to tell a tourist: 

First of all, no one in Portland uses an umbrella, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in a three-piece suit.  If the statue were wearing a hoodie and jeans, he’d look more like the locals.

These iconic Benson Bubblers were installed around the city in 1912 by a tee-totaling lumber baron, and are still in use today.







After the tour ended, we stopped at a Thai restaurant for an early supper, then...

We had one last very important stop to make before we left downtown Portland – a trip to the famous Voodoo Donuts!

Now, this is my kind of place! 

Kaia liked it, too. 
 It certainly had a quirky kind of ambiance!

We left with donuts for dessert, plus a box of donuts to enjoy while driving to Washington the next morning.  Check back soon for that blog entry.

The pet picture of the day shows Bandido and Kaia enjoying a game of tug.