West-coast wanderings
Mar. 22nd, 2008 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
So I’m in Portland. Oregon. I’m on vacation visiting![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
methanopyrus for the week. I’m mostly not jet-lagged anymore, but I’m still a bit loopy.
Right, so I left work on Friday afternoon after packing up my office. I’m moving to new office digs this week...and since I’m gone, I had to pack up early. I drove down to Alewife and took the T in. Fairly uneventful except I got to be the special friend of drunk homeless guy. Curse my Midwestern upbringing that makes me too polite to just completely avoid eye contact with anyone.
For anyone curious, the silver line out to the airport is really slick, even when jammed full of college kids headed off to spring break.
Get to the airport, go through security. Wait around for awhile. Board the aircraft. Nearly get some space to myself before last-minute passenger fills our row. Taxi out. Wait. Wait. Wait. Taxi back in. The little tow vehicle that pushed the plane out got snarled/stuck on the nose landing gear so once they got it uncoupled, they towed it back in to the gate to make sure that it was ok.
Long story, short, we were an hour late getting out. The 2-3 year-old behind me only had a couple of meltdowns on the six-hour flight.
Get to PDX, meet up withmethanopyrus and we grab the car and drive back to her place. She’s got a nice little house. Hippie, but not *too* hippie. I meet one of her housemates. Eventually we decide to go back for food. We hit some local fast-food place called Burger Village. Can I just say that Chocolate Hazelnut milkshakes are pretty kick-ass? Finish up and off to bed.
This morning we get up, putter around a bit and I check the weather. Clear, sunny skies in the low 60’s. It’s expected to be the nicest day my entire time here. So we decide to get outside and enjoy as much as we can. But first -- brunch. We go to this local place called the Country Cat. Lots of good stuff. I had the eggs benedict and pear crisp with honey. Tasty stuff.
Then it’s off to our first outdoor adventure, the Portland Japanese Garden. It’s a wonderful little 5-acre park in the middle of a larger set of city parks and gardens. They’ve got a wide variety of garden styles from very formal, to more freeform, to a nice rock garden that we being re-sculpted while we were visiting. We spent an hour or two just wandering around and taking everything in.
After that, we debated about what to do next. We decided that as long as the weather was good, we could take a drive along the Columbia River Highway. This is a scenic highway designed mostly to show off a number of falls that com tumbling down the Columbia River Gorge on their way to the Columbia River. We started out driving up to the Crown Point Overlook. It was windy. Really windy. I could easily lean against strong gusts windy. But the view was spectacular. Long views down the wide river valley and out across to the various mountains in the area.
After that we drove down along winding, twisting paths and stopped off at various waterfalls along the way. The first one, the Latourell fall, was probably the one I liked the best since the trail took you very close to the bottom of it and we got a light drenching from the falls. The other falls along the trail were all pretty nice (some of them much easier to access than others). The final one we stopped at (and probably the most famous in the chain), was the Multnomah falls. A huge two-step fall that dropped 600 feet in total from the top. From the bottom of the falls, you could take a short path up to a bridge that spanned the top of the lower falls. It was impressive, but pretty crowded.
That was the end of the falls so we drove back home and I took a nap. Now I think we’re going to go out for supper. I’ve taken some photos of the various places we went today so hopefully I can post those in awhile.
later
Tom
So I’m in Portland. Oregon. I’m on vacation visiting
methanopyrus for the week. I’m mostly not jet-lagged anymore, but I’m still a bit loopy.Right, so I left work on Friday afternoon after packing up my office. I’m moving to new office digs this week...and since I’m gone, I had to pack up early. I drove down to Alewife and took the T in. Fairly uneventful except I got to be the special friend of drunk homeless guy. Curse my Midwestern upbringing that makes me too polite to just completely avoid eye contact with anyone.
For anyone curious, the silver line out to the airport is really slick, even when jammed full of college kids headed off to spring break.
Get to the airport, go through security. Wait around for awhile. Board the aircraft. Nearly get some space to myself before last-minute passenger fills our row. Taxi out. Wait. Wait. Wait. Taxi back in. The little tow vehicle that pushed the plane out got snarled/stuck on the nose landing gear so once they got it uncoupled, they towed it back in to the gate to make sure that it was ok.
Long story, short, we were an hour late getting out. The 2-3 year-old behind me only had a couple of meltdowns on the six-hour flight.
Get to PDX, meet up with
methanopyrus and we grab the car and drive back to her place. She’s got a nice little house. Hippie, but not *too* hippie. I meet one of her housemates. Eventually we decide to go back for food. We hit some local fast-food place called Burger Village. Can I just say that Chocolate Hazelnut milkshakes are pretty kick-ass? Finish up and off to bed.This morning we get up, putter around a bit and I check the weather. Clear, sunny skies in the low 60’s. It’s expected to be the nicest day my entire time here. So we decide to get outside and enjoy as much as we can. But first -- brunch. We go to this local place called the Country Cat. Lots of good stuff. I had the eggs benedict and pear crisp with honey. Tasty stuff.
Then it’s off to our first outdoor adventure, the Portland Japanese Garden. It’s a wonderful little 5-acre park in the middle of a larger set of city parks and gardens. They’ve got a wide variety of garden styles from very formal, to more freeform, to a nice rock garden that we being re-sculpted while we were visiting. We spent an hour or two just wandering around and taking everything in.
After that, we debated about what to do next. We decided that as long as the weather was good, we could take a drive along the Columbia River Highway. This is a scenic highway designed mostly to show off a number of falls that com tumbling down the Columbia River Gorge on their way to the Columbia River. We started out driving up to the Crown Point Overlook. It was windy. Really windy. I could easily lean against strong gusts windy. But the view was spectacular. Long views down the wide river valley and out across to the various mountains in the area.
After that we drove down along winding, twisting paths and stopped off at various waterfalls along the way. The first one, the Latourell fall, was probably the one I liked the best since the trail took you very close to the bottom of it and we got a light drenching from the falls. The other falls along the trail were all pretty nice (some of them much easier to access than others). The final one we stopped at (and probably the most famous in the chain), was the Multnomah falls. A huge two-step fall that dropped 600 feet in total from the top. From the bottom of the falls, you could take a short path up to a bridge that spanned the top of the lower falls. It was impressive, but pretty crowded.
That was the end of the falls so we drove back home and I took a nap. Now I think we’re going to go out for supper. I’ve taken some photos of the various places we went today so hopefully I can post those in awhile.
later
Tom
