Summer 2008 Oregon (and Washington) Trail

Stacie’s on vacation this year, so I don’t think she’s doing much of a blog… but since I have 3 weeks of traveling this year, I thought I’d document our travels a little bit.

We left on from San Francisco, the day after she arrived from a 5 day trip to the Warren Mountains (the far right-upper most -a.k.a. northeast- corner of California) with a horticulture group. I had just finished 2 weeks of intense studying for the second step of the medical board exam.

We packed frantically Monday evening, and Tuesday headed straight up towards Crater Lake National Park, in Oregon. Two thirds of the trip were under a dark haze from the fires all over California. At some points the smoke was so thick, it reminded us of the fog at home in San Francisco, except that the sun was an eerie orange. Even with the sky so dark, the weather in the valley was above 100ºF. As we passed Shasta Mountain, the skies cleared and we finally entered clear blue skies. We quickly stopped for a photo op at the Oregon border.

We then headed up to our campground just south of Crater Lake. Once there, in less than a few hours, I managed to cruise through my first leisure book I have gotten to enjoy in a long time. Our camping neighbor demonstrated how to travel and camp with only the essentials: a tent, a motorcycle and a pair of leather boots. Our car has a little more stuff than that.

We camped the night and got up early the next day and headed up to Crater Lake. What a beautiful sight!

Stacie lead the way on 2 hikes, for a total of 5 miles (according to Stacie, I’d like to say they were more like 7 miles). We were at 7000 -8000 feet altitude so we were in the 80’s, while most everywhere else was sweltering in the heat.

Stacie took this great photo on our hike down to touch the lake.

We camped another night at Crater Lake, and then headed up to Eugene, Ore. for lunch. We stopped at a waterfall on the way. The mosquitoes rushed us back to the car after a couple minutes of enjoyment and the required photo, see below.

In Eugene, we found a great pizza place, and sat outside under an umbrella enjoying our lunch. We planned another hike on the way to Portland, but due to me being distracted we missed the exit (by a whole lot), so we continued on our way to Portland. We arrived to our hotel at a Portland suburb (called Milwaukie) and watched the required TV dose. Since we do not have a TV at home, we consider watching TV at the hotels we stay at, a relaxing portion of our vacation. TV withdrawal… how weird.

On the next day we headed to downtown Portland. As we went to catch the light-rail, they were fixing the fare machine, so they handed us each a free fare to ride the train. We were just on time to our reservation at lunch at the Northwest Culinary Institute’s student run restaurant – Blue. We ate way through 5 scrumptiously delicious courses. Bill for the 2 of us: including a tip: $40.

We then made our way around downtown Portland. First the Art Museum: the photo below is of me at the art museum. (Stacie's modern art!)

Then we headed to the Japanese garden

Next we saw the famous Portland Rose Garden. Portland is very proud of this garden. Hundreds of varieties of roses being tested for resistance against various conditions: pests, chemicals, weather and such. The ones that flourish get commercialized, those who don’t do so well get destroyed. “Survival of the fittest sped up.” We then continued to walk around downtown Portland: Pioneer Square, Powell’s Bookstore, the Pearl District, Old Town, “China Town” (you could tell it was Chinatown by the lamp posts, but we did not see a single person of Asian ethnicity), and then a wonderful stroll along the riverfront. We ended up at a wine bar on the riverfront, and had some wine and cheese. Yup, that's Stacie being cheezy by the river in the photo.

Talk about love at first sight. Stacie loves this city. Portland had perfect weather, quaint downtown with a lot of great stores and happening fun places. I think she’s really hoping that I get into residency there. The next day, after a night and morning of HBO on TV, we strolled around the Portland downtown Saturday Market, a crafts fair with a ton of true local artists. Stacie got a T-shirt from. She makes really cute rustic T’s: highly recommended.

We then headed out the Columbia River Gorge, while making repeated “gorgeous” puns. We stopped at a few waterfalls, and hiked up to the top of a couple them, included are photos of them. It was over 90 degrees, so we limited the distance of our hike. We then stopped at a famous dam, but it had closed at 5pm, so we didn’t get to see it, dam!

We did stop for about 3 minutes at the fishery nearby. I included a video of the fish, whose natural instinct is to swim upstream. There is water pouring into the holding tanks-to keep the water fresh and oxygenated, and the fish are jumping at the stream of water, even though there is a big metal plate to keep them from going anywhere.

Tonight (Friday evening) we arrived to Hood River. We went down to the riverside and spent some time reading and watching a motley crew of dogs prance around. We will be heading up toward the Washington Alpine Lakes area tomorrow after a hike near Mount Hood.