The Dream of the 90s is alive in Portland

Our week-long Oregon road trip wrapped up in Portland, where we had a couple of days to explore the city. Driving up from the south, we arrived in the early evening and went straight to Oaks amusement Park so Paul could get a new coaster credit. From there we went to check in to our AirBnB in the Alberta neighborhood in Northeast Portland. This neighborhood, a few miles from downtown, was recommended to use by Kyung-Hwa. It's a neat neighborhood, with a variety of restaurants and shops lining Alberta Street. We started the evening with a beer at Great Notion Brewing, then had dinner in a little food truck park at Mole Mole. Our final stop was Salt and Straw, an ice cream place with some unique flavors. Their theme of the month was "eat your vegetables" and they had flavors like spinach cake with chocolate tahini fudge, green fennel & maple, and charred corn curd. Our favorites were the carrot cake batter and honey lavender. Salt and Straw has expanded and now has 30 locations, but this was their original location.

Having fun on Adrenaline Peak at Oaks Park.

Our AirBnB was filled with bicycle items - very Portlandia!

Our AirBnB was a really cute little accessory dwelling unit.

Beer and pretzel time!

The Alberta neighborhood has lots of restaurants and shops.

Triple mole enchiladas!

Mole Mole in a little food truck park on Alberta Street.

The line for Salt and Straw.  😬

Sunday morning, for our last full day in Oregon, we started with an assortment of breakfast items from several local joints. We had biscuits from Pine State Biscuits, drinks from Barista, and pastries from Petite Provence. We then drove downtown, just in time for opening at Powell's Books, the world's largest independent book store. We got a couple of books, then walked over to Lan Su Garden. This is a small Chinese Garden right in downtown that was built by artisans from Suzhou, China (one of Portland's sister cities). It's a lovely and peaceful garden. We took some time to explore the different areas of the garden, enjoyed the blooming lotus flowers, and had some tea in the tea house.

We had lunch at Paul's friend Doan's house, and hung out with her and her family for the afternoon, including a walk around Willamette Park. Finally we drove up to Council crest park, the highest point in the city of Portland at 1,073 feet. We went here for the views, and were rewarded with sweeping vistas of downtown Portland and Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, and Mt. St. Helens in the distance. After returning to our AirBnB, we walked to nearby Yang's noodles for dinner, then made one final visit to Salt and straw.

Biscuit and iced coffee for breakfast.

Paul after a successful visit to Powell's Bookstore!

Portland's Chinatown gate.

The Lan Su Garden was lovely on a sunny day.

Paul in a circular doorway.

We had a pleasant time walking in the garden.

David enjoying his iced tea.

Paul's adorable tea cup.

Lotus pods and the garden's central pond.

Views from along the river.

Downtown and the mountains from Council Crest Park.

Peek-a-boo volcano!

Heaping plates of noodles at Yang's.

On our final morning, we took a short walk around Alberta Park near our AirBnB before heading to the airport. On the flight back to Atlanta we had some spectacular views of the volcanoes.

Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. Adams, all lined up!

Amazing stratovolcano views from the plane.

This was our second time to Portland. It's a great livable city, but the downtown has suffered quite a bit from the pandemic and teleworking, while the neighborhoods are booming. We hope to return to Oregon again soon!

Exploring the Oregon/California Coast

On our second full day in the Redwoods area, we decided to explore the Oregon Coast. We drove north from Smith River California, and stopped at several viewpoints and beaches in the Samuel H Boardman scenic corridor. The weather started out foggy from the marine layer, but it quickly cleared up and we had a beautiful sunny day. Our first stop was the natural bridges overlook. This is one of the most scenic spots on the Oregon coast, with views of rock arches soaring over blue-green water.

Just up the road we took the short but steep path down to "Secret Beach." This is a beautiful sandy beach overlooking several big rock formations. We spent over an hour here, walking on the sand and climbing over rocks and generally enjoying the views and sunshine. Our last stop was at the Arch Rock overlook, which had a short loop trail overlooking some offshore sea stacks and islands, including one with a large arch.

Looking down to the natural bridges.

Making our way down to Secret Beach.

The views from Secret Beach.

Looking out from a little cove at Secret Beach.

Arch rock.

From here we drove back south to Brookings, where we stopped in Recycle Video Games and had lunch at Khun Thai. We finished out the day with some time on the beach and watching the sunset from our AirBnB.

Mario (left) and David (right).

Lunchtime!

The path next to our AirBnB led down to the beach.

David on a nice sunny day!

Sunset from our AirBnB.

No complaints about the views! :)

The next day, Saturday, we began the six hour drive to Portland. We had great views on the drive along the coast, and our first stop was the Umpqua River Lighthouse. This is a whale-watching spot, but unfortunately it was the wrong time of year for whales. We still enjoyed taking in the coastal views and the sunshine.

Continuing north, we stopped at Oregon dunes, specifically the Tahkenitch dunes. There are some trails that lead over the dunes down to the beach (about a mile each way)...but since we were in a rush we had to just wander around near the parking area for a bit and look at the dunes.

Next we stopped at a little restaurant for a healthy lunch in the town of Yachats at Beach Street Kitchen. This town was actually all around a very cute place and we wish we had more time to spend checking it out...maybe next time! From here, we continued on our way to Portland, stopping at another Recycle Video Games store in Newport, before turning inland and heading towards Corvallis to see the stadium, and then onward to Portland.

There were lots of big bridges on the Oregon coast.

We made a quick stop at the Umpqua River Lighthouse.

The Oregon Dunes.

Sunny, but still pretty cool on the coast!

We read that most all of the grass you see on the dunes is invasive from Europe 😞

A colorful and healthy lunch at Beach Street Kitchen!

There are little blackberry patches all over Oregon!

There were lots of views like this on the drive, where rivers met the sea and mountains.

Oregon State's Reser Stadium in Corvallis

We then drove the rest of the way to Portland - which we cover in our final Oregon road trip blog post.

Caves and Redwoods in Southern Oregon and Northern California

For the next leg of our Oregon road trip, we left Crater Lake and began the long drive toward the coast, with several stops planned along the way. We had a late breakfast in Cave Junction at the River Valley Restaurant. It was a nice little family diner. Cave Junction is a small town of just 2,000 people, situated along Hwy 199 where the road to Oregon Caves branches off. Oddly enough, Paul's cousin used to live here!

After lunch we stopped by Taylor's sausage country store then drove up to Oregon Caves National Monument where we had reservations for a tour. The road winds up a mountain, taking about 40 minutes of driving until it dead-ends at the cave. The cave, which is one of the very few marble caves in the US, was established as a national monument in 1909. It's an impressive cave, with some neat formations and several species that are found only here. David was a little caved-out, so he sat this one out and instead hiked to the top of the mountain over the cave to take in the views.

Big portions - and a logging truck in the background!

In the late 1800s and early 1900s people used to write on the cave walls.

One of the big rooms in the cave.

There were some impressive formations in the cave!

Some steep sections of the cave had a lot of stairs.

It's just as pretty above as below (if not more so).

Leaving the caves, we continued driving southwest, and made a stop at the Darlingtonia botanical trail. It's a small loop trail just off the side of the road that goes past a grove of carnivorous California pitcher plants, also known as the cobra lily. The plant only exists in southwest Oregon and Northern California, so it was cool to see hundreds of this unique species.

Arriving in Smith River, California, just south of the Oregon border, we checked into our AirBnB. We would be spending three nights here, so we splurged on a little cottage right on the ocean - and it was worth it! We had great views overlooking the beach, and got to observe the changing weather patterns: mostly cloudy from the marine layer, but with a few sunny hours here and there. After settling in, we drove north to Brookings and had dinner at Pacific Sushi, and finished the day with a walk on the beach at sunset and some time in the hot tub on our deck.

Pitcher plants have translucent "windows" that the bugs try to escape through.

A field of pitcher plants.

The amazing ocean view from our AirBnB. It usually wasn't this sunny!

Ramen time.

The beach below our cabin was very peaceful.

Our AirBnB was in this row of cabins directly overlooking the Pacific.

The next day was our "redwoods" day. Redwood National Park is unique because it's jointly operated by the National Park Service and California Department of Parks and Recreation. The area is a UNESCO world heritage site, and preserves the tallest trees on earth. We woke up relatively early and went straight to Stout Memorial Grove, which is part of Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park. It was good to get here early and enjoy a peaceful little hike, taking in the stillness of the forest before it got crowded later in the day. Our next stop was just down the road, the newly renovated low-impact Grove of the Titans trail. This was a really great hike with plenty of views of redwoods and good information on interpretive signs. We would definitely recommend this trail.

David with some very tall trees.

A little bridge just off the Stout grove trail.

It's hard to get a sense of how tall the trees really are here...

The water was extraordinarily clear.

One of the biggest trees we saw.

Path to the Grove of Titans.

Did we say enough times that the trees are huge?

A cool looking tree.

Part of the trail was a tunnel created by a fallen redwood.

The heart of the Grove of the Titans.

After these two little hikes, we drove into Crescent City, California and had lunch at SeaQuake Brewing. We spent a little time exploring the area, including the city's light house, and an area with lot of very loud sea lions, before making a quick stop at a grocery story and heading back to the AirBnB. We finished of the day by driving up in to Oregon to Harris Beach State Park around low tide and checking out the tide pools. We saw plenty of anemones, starfish, and even some crabs.

A beer flight at lunch.

Loud (and ornery) sea lions.

Crescent City, CA is pretty campy...

Coastal views from Harris Beach.

We called this butt rock.

Lots of critters in the tide pools.

Big coastal rocks on a foggy evening.

A crab!

Some little shy guys.

A cloudy sunset from Harris Beach.

The next stop on our Oregon road tip was more of the coast, and making our way to Portland.