Portland

I spent several days in Portland last week, attending the CERF Conference. It was gray, often drizzly, most of the time, but the sun still made a few brief appearances. The whole thing was basically one big train trip, since I took Amtrak both ways and did most of my getting around on MAX.

Portland does not suffer from a lack of places to eat and I spent a fair amount of time taking advantage of them. Between meals, I also made it to both Blue Star and Voodoo Donuts (one visit each) and to Stumptown (several times).

MAX makes getting back and forth between the convention center and downtown fairly quick and it meant many trips across the Steel Bridge, which is just over 100 years old. It's somewhat unique in that the decks can be raised independently, which I think means that they can raise the lower portion, at least a little way, without having to disturb traffic on the upper deck. The upper deck is for cars and MAX. The lower level is for the railroad - and now for bikes, as they hung a pedestrian walkway off the side a number of years ago.

At first glance, this seems a bit far from the coast for a conference on coasts and estuaries and it's true that salt water is a long way away, but the Columbia is influenced by tides as far as upstream as Bonneville, as is this lower section of the Willamette. So maybe the coast isn't really that far away after all.