It's Sunday morning and we're heading out of town to follow the Historic Columbia River Highway to the gorge. It was an old-school scenic road that wound around the hills/mountains with many jaw-dropping views. There was Vista House on Crown Point and the panorama was incredible. The first waterfall we hit was Latourell Falls. You see the lower falls right off the road. There was a looping trail around it. It was worth the hike because the upper falls was one of the best waterfalls of the trip. It had two parts, and it curved from the first down to the second and was pretty amazing (and almost impossible to photograph due to its shape). On the second half of the trail, we almost got lost. There was an unlabeled fork and we weren't sure which way to go. The right way went off uphill (and it seemed we should be going well downhill at that point). We kept crossing a family with a baby in a stroller and the dad had to keep picking up the stroller to carry it across the many obstacles in the trail. Around the confusing point there was a promontory I walked out onto. I'm almost positive it was directly above the lower falls, but it was impossible to see the water without leaning over in such a way I'd surely fall to my death. We could see Multnomah falls as we drove past, but we didn't stop because of the tourist congestion right there. We did stop at Horsetail falls and it was beautiful. We drove back down the highway on our way from the falls and back to town. We went and had dinner at Pok Pok and had some spicy as hell but delicious chicken wings. Then we went way north to Alberta St. where we wandered down its length, eventually settling on great ice cream at Salt & Straw. We wrapped the night up by going BACK to Ground Kontrol so I could have a ball playing arcade games terribly again!
Now we're getting to Monday. We had breakfast at a place called Jam (and our pancakes did have some jam to go with them, we even had marrionberry jam, I had some marrionberry at other points on the trip and it was as delicious as the hype Portlandia bestowed it warranted). Then it was a drive out to the coast of Oregon. We first went up to the top, a town called Astoria. I found it odd that there was a storage facility that had "Goonies never die" on their sign. (I found out later that this was the town The Goonies was filmed in, mystery explained). This was primarily a fishing town. While Mary Beth ate her leftovers and took care of some other business I ended up napping in the car. When I woke up, I took the view on a little pier that she had already had her look-see. Then we drove down the coast making stops whenever the scenery was paralyzingly beautiful. Arcadia Beach was wonderful. We walked down the whole length of it. I reverted to my practice of climbing ALL of the rock formations on the beach. It was a long walk, and on the way back the landscape of the beach was a little different than it had been the first time: there was a dead seal washed up on the shore. That was pretty sad. We ended up down at Manzanita, a sleepy little town that looked like it was filled with old people. We saw the beach from above on a cliff (one of the most spectacular views of the trip) and the beach was real nice down below too. That night we had dinner at Toro Bravo, a tapas place that really has an eye for detail towards Spain. Mary Beth and I were having total flashbacks to our honeymoon. We even waited for our seats at a little standing bar. The food was delicious too. Right above it was a little bar called Secret Society which we went to afterwards. Well, getting into the hotel that night I checked on Facebook and noticed something familiar in one of my friend's userpics. It was wooden tunnel in a mountain that looked awful familiar. I knew it had to be the very tunnel we drove past the day before on the Columbia River Highway. He does live in Portland, so I commented and was right!
Ah, now our trip is ending! It's Thursday, our last full day in Portland. We had lunch downtown at a place called Portland Penny Diner. Can't get away from Elvis no matter how far we go. I had a sandwich named after him. Then we stoppd at two doughnut places (Blue Star and Coco) to eat during our third and final venture to Portland's vast exterior. We didn't go so far. Our first stop was in this remote-but-still-in-the-city neighborhood called St. John's. We went to Cathedral Park, which we couldn't find at first due to a lapse in google maps' directions. But a lady in a shoe store helped us out. It was right under the massive bridge we'd crossed. It was spectacular. There's this park and this huge bridge above (its shape gives the park its name). Then we continued along to Sauvie Island. We bought parking passes at a country store across the bridge called Cracker Barrel (no relation to the chain, which we didn't know at first from the descripions of the island given beforehand). It was also run by two old Asian ladies. The island was nice. We didn't see any otters (they're supposed to be there somewhere, sometimes, or something).. There ended up being a clothing option beach, so we saw more nudity (really just wangs, this time). I went back to the car after we first got out to change into my sandals from my actual shoes and Mary Beth saw a naked dude that I missed. I got my chance later, I guess (and much later, then some!). We left and went to the end of the road at another non-nude beach and ate our delicious doughnuts (those Blue Star ones were outstanding). Well, Mary Beth really wanted to go into the water so we went back to the clothing optional part and after some initial hesitation got naked and waded into the river (the Columbia River, same as at the gorges, probably not as massively wide as up there though, still pretty wide and offering a magnificent view). It was cold, but it was a pretty incredible experience being there in the water and seeing all the nature stuff. As we left, there was someone who looked like they were sunbathing right next to the path back to the parking lot. We get closer and it turns out it's a dude totally jacking off, cock straight up in the air. Don't think that's something I've seen before. Okay. We had read talk that Tanuki was probably going to be opening back up that day, so we went out there again. It was not. Oh well. We drove around, found a few other options that were either not that interesting-looking or had too long a wait and ended up north at Grain & Gristle and had some delicious mussels and french fries. When I had a chance to check the internet again, I saw Jonathan had messaged me back (the friend I mentioned earlier) and wanted to see if I could meet up. So we met up at a bar and did some catching up and it was pretty great. We had a nice conversation and good times and shit.
Miscellany: when I said we went to a bar Friday and couldn't remember: it was Sapphire Hotel. Also we went to a small bookstore called Mother Foucault. I'm getting a little mixed up on the day, but I think it may have been Saturday, after the failed attempt at looking for the esplanade. The guy working there was a hipster hanging out with several of his hipster friends. I got some good books, there was one way up I wanted to look at but didn't wanna ask about moving the ladder as he was absorbed in annoying hipster conversation. When we did check out and talked to him, he was quite nice though.
Okay, so now we're at Wednesday and our departure. We started off with breakfast at Pine State Biscuits and ate some amazing (and very messy, in my case) biscuits in the car. We picked up some sandwiches for our layover at a place called Bunk. Then off to the airport. We got there real early, dropped the car off without a hitch (though the guy politely commented on my strategy of returning it with as little gas as possible as we'd prepaid for a tank, "you must have been running on fumes"). Packing was kinda crazy as we'd bought so much damn stuff on the trip. I was thinking, whatever, we can just mail stuff back to us if we get too much. Mary Beth strategized though and got everything barely squeezed into our luggage. I got nervous when we weighed the heavier bag at check-in but it ended up being right at 50 pounds. The flight was great. Salt Lake City airport was hectic as hell. We did get our one delay there, but not TOO TOO bad. We also got put on a smaller plane and our carry-ons were too stuffed to fit into its overhead compartments. There weren't a whole lot of passengers so there were extra seats and the attendants buckled our stuff into the empty seats. We got back late last night and stayed up pretty late. I grabbed us some Huey's for after our cleaning. I had a package waiting for me: Synthetic Sound Labs: Double Deka Ultrasonic VCO (this one's 5U to go with my dotcom stuff, it's my largest module and it lets you draw the motherfucking waveform with graphic-eq-like sliders, so excited about this, went through a little hassle with it on a message board...wait, this needs to leave these parentheses). I had mentioned wishing there was another run ready on the message board and was contacted by someone wanting to sell me one used. I was like, okay, but I'm about to go out of town and in about a week I'll buy it from ya. Then the manufacturer contacted me saying he had one that had a prototype board in one place due to the plan losing one or something like that. Well, I thought it'd be best to purchase from the actual manufacturer. I think I pissed off the first dude, but, ah, I'm sorry. He did sell it. Anyway, motherfucking hella excited about this one.
So now we're back to today. Woke up late, Picked up some cat medicine from the vet. Picked up sandwiches from Bogie's (as we don't really have any food here). Went to the gym. Hadn't been in forever. Wanted to go in Portland, but there's some weird thing where their YMCA "refocused" its mission to cater to children in the suburbs. They no longer had any actual gyms in the city. I had to look all over the internet to figure out why there was nothing coming up that seemed right. So it'd been forever since I went to the gym. It was pretty good, but my fucking thumb still hurts. I didn't do all of my squats because the weight was hurting my thumb too much for that lift (did everything else though). Well, here we are! Pacific Northwest, I loved ya!
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