Travel: Oregon & Portland
Over Thanksgiving weekend Mike, the dog and I took a mini road trip up to Portland, and to visit some of his old high school friends in Southern Oregon. We drove up the coast and first stopped and camped at Fort Bragg. The ride up was kinda the worse, We were training Tripp in his carrier case for our flight home this winter. Of course he got sick, so that was a fun drive... Then after really winding roads up the coast we finally got to Fort Bragg in the dark. It was interesting where we camped... not somewhere I'd want to go again, but an interesting none the less.
After a night of Tripp puking again on Mike while he was sleeping we woke up bright and early and got the heck out of that campground. First stop was the glass beach which actually used to be where the city dumped their trash in the early century, and now it's a beach full of sea glass. Really pretty but kinda a weird tourist attraction, hey see where our trash used to be! Make a necklace out of it! hehe.
Soon we were off up the coast on the 1 and soon driving on the Avenue of Giants, which I drove when I first moved out here, but it was still so beautiful! We even stopped by Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox... unfortunately he wasn't talking this time, But it was good to get another picture with him. We then headed up to Grant's Pass, OR for one of the best Thanksgiving feasts I've had in so long, we spent it with some of Mike's old highschool friends that now live up there, and the food they prepared was amazing. I'm a little ashamed that we didn't have anything other than wine to contribute.
We stayed over for the night and in the morning Vikki and Adam took us on a drive up some mountains so we could see all of Williams Valley. Of course it was raining but living in the drought and working at a weather station I can't ever complain about it, I now welcome the rain I hardly see. After our goodbyes we started up to Portland, grabbed lunch in Eugene then got to our AirBNB in the early evening. The Airbnb was soooo adorable, it was a little basement studio decorated perfectly, I kinda wish I could steal everything... or at least steal all their ideas :)
After settling in we headed out for the evening and went into downtown Portland. After walking around for awhile in the freezing cold (I swear my body can't take it anymore) we ended up having dinner at Picnic House, I think I was "mmmming" every bite, it was SO good, and their cocktails were equally delicious. I had the pork chop and bread pudding..... mmmmmmmm.... Unfortunately we stuffed ourselves so we couldn't try dessert.
The next morning we packed our stuff up and headed to SE Hawthorn to meetup with blogger buddy Meg at Blue Star Donuts. It was so awesome to meet Meg in real life, we've now known each other through the internet for awhile and it was so naturally hanging out. We stopped in a few stores, and spent the most time in the book store, nerding out over comics and she gave me some new suggestions, namely Rocket Girl, which looks awesome, I can't wait to read it all... I'm actually half way through already. We hugged and said our goodbyes just in time on the way back to the car it started sleeting. Man I really don't know how to handle winter.
 |
| My favorite "I didn't realize I took a photo" photo |
From Portland we crossed over into Washington for a bit, got some coffee then headed back down to Oakland... Yep we drove the entire 9+ hours that day, of course it was raining like crazy but that's alright, and it was a good test for Tripp in his carrier for that long, he only yelped a couple times.
Anyway it was a fun little quick trip, and I'm so excited to go back to Portland, I hope to go back over the summer and go hiking in the mountains!
