Keep Portland Weird

Portland - the next best thing to Vancouver (so far, at least).  Home to hundreds of food carts, excellent public transit, crazy donuts, vegan mini malls, the world's smallest park, and the nearby Columbia River Gorge.  There are shirts and bumper stickers touting "Keep Portland Weird" and I see why.  The city has a quirkiness about it that you can't help but love!

We stayed with another great hostess through couchsurfing, who happened to be fostering 6 adorable kittens while we were there - bonus!

From her place in a suburb of Portland, we were able to explore the city at our leisure.  Our initial attempt at checking out the city was by car.  We soon realized that was a bad idea.  In a city like Portland, the emphasis is on public transit, biking, and walking - not automobiles.  Trying to navigate in the van, find parking on the street, and then be rushed in sightseeing due to the "meter", was not fun at all.  The final straw was a minor accident where someone clipped the taillight of our van with her mirror while trying to squeeze around us in traffic.  Luckily the taillight was the only thing damaged and it was an easy fix.

After that we headed to the Park N Ride near our host's home and hopped on the light rail.  It was great!  Even though we were 20-30 minutes by car from downtown, it only took about 10 minutes.  The cost was $4.75 per person for an all day pass, which allowed us to ride all forms of public transit.  The train and buses were clean, efficient, and gave plenty of notice for upcoming stops (helpful for folks like us from out of town).

The "contraception train".  Get on board!!

We decided to check out some of the recommended sights in Portland and our first stop was Powell's Books, a famous and huge bookstore.

They even have their own iPhone app to navigate you around the store!  We enjoyed exploring the sustainable living and craft sections, bought a few postcards, and checked out another smaller bookstore nearby, Countermedia.  It was home to rare books and vintage erotica.  What a cool place.

From there we needed some lunch so we headed to a food cart that was recommended online, called Homegrown Smoker.  Portland is famous for the endless food carts that abound in the downtown area.  Every ethnicity of food, fancy to simple, and even 100% vegan.  Homegrown Smoker was a vegan cart and specialized in BBQ food fare.

We ordered a plate that included BBQ soy curls, tempeh ribs, baked beans, mac n cheese, coleslaw and molasses cornbread, then dug in together.

It was so good!  In fact, we enjoyed it so much that we made our own tempeh ribs and mac n cheese for dinner that night too!

After lunch we headed to see the Portlandia statue, which hangs from the Portland Building downtown.  She reaches down from above to say "Welcome".  It's the second largest copper statue in the US, after the Statue of Liberty.

From there we were on to the world's smallest city park, Mill Ends Park.  This tiny park, all 452 square inches of it, has a cute story behind it although it's not much to see and you'd probably miss it if you weren't looking for it.

Look closely, it's there in the median

All that exploring and walking had us ready for an afternoon snack, so it was on to Voodoo Doughnuts.  This famous doughnut joint was a stop on the Amazing Race and features crazy weird doughnut concoctions.  The best part though was that they make many of them vegan!

Their signature doughnut is the chocolate frosted Voodoo Doll, complete with raspberry filling and a pretzel stake in his heart.

We had to get one!  I was also interested in the Cock-n-Balls but they were out of the vegan ones :(  All was good, as one voodoo doughnut was plenty for both of us.  As far as doughnuts go, it wasn't the best we've ever had (that was at Wall Drug in South Dakota) but it was a lot of fun!

Our last exploration of the day took us to the east side of Portland, near the Hawthorn District.  We visited Red and Black cafe for a couple of iced teas, then checked out the nearby vegan mini mall.  It's a small strip mall that features all vegan businesses.  As it was late in the day, the only thing still open was Food Fight, the vegan grocery.  So, we checked it out, bought a couple of things, then headed back, via bus and light rail, to our car and eventually our host's house.

Check out the hours

The next day we decided to avoid the city entirely and head out to the Columbia River Gorge and check out some waterfalls.  We arrived at Multnomah Falls and decided we would brave the approx 6 mile loop hike to the top of the falls and around to Wahkeena Falls, passing gorgeous views and many other waterfalls.  It was worth it but boy was it STEEP!  The ascending part felt more like 6 miles by itself!  We did it, though, and really enjoyed our day.  Some gorgeous pictures came from our hike too.

After our day of hiking, we headed back home for the night.  On the way, we realized we needed gas.  Using our trusty iPhone app "Gas Buddy" we found a Safeway nearby with the cheapest gas around ($3.59/gal).  As we pulled in, an employee came walking toward our car, then asked if we needed our oil checked or window washed and if we were paying with card.  Huh???  I was so confused.  Did we pull in to a Full Service station?  I was a bit defensive because I thought he was a bum wanting money!

He looked just as confused as I was, as he reassured me I wouldn't pay any extra per gallon for him to pump it.  After he started it pumping, he walked away to help someone else.  The pump clicked off when it had finished, but he was nowhere in sight.  I was still feeling a little weird and confused about someone pumping my gas for me, so I hopped out and prepared to top it off by myself.  The attendant came walking over and said "You know you're not allowed to do that, right?"  I thought he was trying to pull one over on me!  Come to find out, it is illegal to pump your own gas in Oregon!!!!  The only other state that's this way is New Jersey.  Boy did I feel stupid, but we all got some good laughs out of the situation.  Between the full service at the pump and no sales tax, we're really liking Oregon :)

We decided to move on to a new couchsurfing host's house the next day.  She lived a little north of the city on an urban homestead.  It sounded super cool from her description.  She had a really neat place, with rabbits, chickens, a stage, a cob sauna/hut, gardens galore, bees, and even an outdoor kitchen in the works.

The local cat "Binky"

The place was a bit chaotic as there were lots of projects in the works and they were preparing for an upcoming outdoor concert to be held in the side yard.  It made us a little uncomfortable knowing the rabbits were being raised exclusively for food.  And there was some weirdness about the house - our whole tour consisted only of the outside, with only a mention that there was a bathroom in the basement we could use. The cob hut (normally the couchsurfer sleeping quarters) was occupied, so our sleeping option was to put up our tent somewhere on the property.  Sounds great, except most of the property was sloped.  So, we found a (relatively) flat spot and set up our tent.

We jumped right in and offered to help our host plant some new herbs and flowers she had just bought, pulled up some weeds and fed them to the rabbits, and picked 4 pints of raspberries from her bushes - yum!  After cooking dinner on our propane stove in her outdoor "cafe" area and hanging out for a bit, we were off to bed, soon realizing that the slight incline of our tent was more noticeable as it seemed we slowly rolled downhill in our bed throughout the night.  We ended up squished on one side next to the tent entrance by morning.  We decided at that point it was best we move on elsewhere, so we packed everything up and did just that.

Realizing we still had a $10 gift card to Ikea, we headed there and had some lunch, browsed their cool model small living setups, ideal for yurts, then bought $7 worth of food - potato fritters, blueberry jam and a chocolate bar (yep, Ikea sells food).  We found a cheap Motel 6 in Tigard, Oregon, just south of Portland, for the night.  That night we decided to treat ourselves to a cider and local brew on tap at the McMenamins John Barleycorns pub.

While we were enjoying our brews, we received a "yes" to a couchsurfing request from Michelle in Neskowin, OR, so that's where we headed the next day.  We were super excited to see the coast!

The Oregon Coast definitely deserves it's own entry so stay tuned...