Portland, OR Land of Port.

Nancy’s friend got married last weekend, so she invited me to accompany her to Portland to see where she grew up. So I went. We left on Thursday morning before any human should be awake. As we were landing in Portland, the first thing I noticed were trees, beautiful, green trees. Her mom was nice enough to pick us up at the airport (speaking of which, shout out to her sister Natalie for taking us so the airport too early). Nancy’s parents have a little dog named Racer, which is really sweet, but apparently he calls the guest room home. So each morning, I’d leave to use the restroom or eat breakfast, and I’d come back to find this:

It’s your bed and I’m just borrowing it. I get it.

(**click on any image to see a larger version**)

First things first, Nancy chipped her tooth the week before, so we needed to make a pitstop at the dentist’s office. Which just so happens to be her dad’s office. Because he’s a dentist. He made quick work of it, returning her teeth to perfection, and we were off.

After that we went to Burgerville (Fresh. Local. Sustainable) and had some delicious burgers and onion rings. There was a squirrel that lived at the location we ate at (the worker told us) and sure enough a few minutes later, he came over for a bite. We were done eating, so we offered some extra ranch dressing, but he wasn’t interested.

Then Nancy took me up to 23rd street, which is a hip little boutique area of Portland. It was very cool. We stopped by a couple stores, and she felt bad that most of them were geared toward women, so she took me to Steel, a man’s boutique clothing store (couldn’t you tell by the name). Although it was small and the employee/owner? girl was listening in on our conversation and injecting her own opinion for literally everything we were saying, they did have some cool shirts. I had a tough time deciding between a v-neck with a shark fighting a bear and a tee with a giant owl with a star on it.  The winning shirt is in a few of the photos from the trip. Try to spot it.

We went home and had dinner with Nancy’s parents on the back porch. The house is positioned to block the sun from the back deck in the afternoon and so it is perfect to just sit back, relax and enjoy the weather. I took some pictures in their backyard:

After dinner we gathered around the kitchen table and played golf (the card game) of which I had played once over a year ago. The first round I got my trash kicked and they had their fun at my expense . Of course, we played a second round and, let’s just say, if the game were an Olympic sport, I’d be in Beijing right now. This of course feeds my theory that I kick butt…at life. But more specifically, the card game Golf.

On Friday, we drove up Mt. Hood to ride the alpine slides. Those are the concrete/plastic quarter pipes they build on some ski resorts so that in the summer months, when the snow is melted, you can take a wheeled slide down it like a toboggan (Park City has them too). I had never done it before, but it was really fun.

Afterward we went up to the Timberline Lodge. Do you recognize it?

If you guessed that it was used in the movie “The Shining”, you guessed right. It was really rustic and beautiful. You could see the top of Mt Hood pretty good from here and the resort was still open to go skiing in August!

Inside the lodge, it was old (built during the New Deal) and amazing. We walked around a bit and played some shuffleboard.

Nancy beat me in shuffleboard (again) which weakens my theory that I kick butt. But a little chipmunk came to the window to wish me luck regardless. He wanted to see Nancy go down as much as I did. Someday little chipmunk, someday…

After Timberline, we hit the road again to head down to the gorge. We stopped to buy (and eat!) some fresh cherries.

The gorge is beautiful and windy.

Nancy’s friend, Katie (that was getting married the next day), had a get together/picnic type thing we stopped by for a while. She was really nice and it was fun to finally meet her.

On our way back we stopped by Crown Point to see our third wedding of the day (it was 8-8-08 afterall).

We got there as the sun was thinking about setting…eventually…

Later that night we went to a restaurant called Montage. It’s a really loud and crowded place under a bridge in Portland. It’s a lot of fun! We met up with Nancy’s friend Shirah and caught up with life.

The next day we headed back up to the gorge and then some to a beautiful bed and breakfast at the end of a long rode for Katie’s wedding

As soon as the sun went down, the temperature dropped. We had a delicious dinner and some cake before getting back in the car just to heat up (and take the 90 minute drive back)

We got home and I got to meet Nancy’s brother and very preggers sister-in-law for a second before bedtime. On Sunday we went to church and ate dinner on the deck again. We ended up on the couches to watch the Olympics and stayed up to watch the men’s 4×100 swimming relay.  We were all tired and yet, by the end of the race we were all jumping up and down cheering the TV on. It was pretty funny. Eat it France.

On Monday, we went to the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Washington. It is actually the first settlement in what is now considered Washington State way back in 1825.

Nancy’s mom took us back to the airport and we were on our way home. All in all, a fun little vacation and a great intro to the Portland area! From the plane we could see Mt Rainier, Mt Saint Helens, and Mt Adams (and Mt Hood, but not in this photo):

To see the whole album of photos, check out my Flickr set!