Japanese Garden

Portland's Japanese Garden is perched in the hills just west of town and the garden itself is topographically challenging. I think that sort of adds to its appeal, since it provides hiding places and surprise vistas.

Japanese Gardens appeal to me for the same reasons they do to many - the created landscapes, the structures, the water features, and the pathways. The trees and the flowers are great, but it's really more about story telling.

 

Northwest Portland

Portland, like any city, is more than just a downtown core. And I suspect we're like many tourists in recent years - we've found that the neighborhoods aren't just for locals. The locals, I suppose, see this as a mixed blessing.

I'm sure it's been aided by the spread of great restaurants to less traveled parts of town, the growth of short-term rentals and small boutique hotels, and ultimately, the internet. Which makes finding these places much easier and less uncertain.

This is the second year we've stayed in the northwest part of Portland. It's not that we didn't explore other neighborhoods by car and transit, but it was nice making our base somewhere other than downtown. 23rd is thriving. And the old industrial Slabtown area is sprouting housing and restaurants. We stay right on the street car line, so it's easy to get around, even into downtown if we want.

One of my favorite spots is the Dragonfly Coffee House. Good coffee, great atmosphere, and a sense that I'm visiting someone else's neighborhood, but that they don't seem to mind.

I associate this place with Ursula Le Guin, who had contributed to a neighborhood history that I found on a table here last year -- I guess she was part of this neighborhood. Maybe that's what had prompted me to reread Left Hand of Darkness this past January - which I was just finishing when she died.  I'm not sure if there's a connection or not, but "Dragonfly" is also a reference to a Tale of Earthsea.

Beacon Rock

 

Beacon Rock is an 800' rock monolith standing on the north bank of the Columbia just downstream of Bonneville Dam. It's also a State Park and there is an amazing trail that zigzags its way up to the top.

We had detoured east from the I-5 Corridor to visit the Columbia Gorge on our way down to Portland - it was the first time in a very long time (maybe ever?) that we had driven the Washington side of the river through this section. After Beacon Rock, we passed the dam and crossed the Bridge of the Gods to Oregon. Where most slopes were charred from last year's fires.

The gorge is carved through Columbia River Basalts, which flowed this way to reach the sea before much of the modern Cascades formed. The lava flows are many millions of years old, whereas Beacon Rock is a basalt plug that formed the core of a small volcano a little more than 50,000 years ago. Very different stories.

This section of the Columbia Gorge has a rich geologic history. Besides its volcanic features, the canyon is significant in that the Columbia is the only river between the Fraser and the Klamath that cuts through the Cascade Range, which otherwise forms a stark drainage divide between the damp coast and the dry interior. At the end of the last ice age (less than 20,000 years ago), as many as 100 catastrophic floods rushed through the Gorge as Lake Missoula repeatedly emptied out from behind its ice dam in northern Idaho. And then, just a few hundred years ago, a huge landslide occurred on this side of the river just above Bonneville, pushing the river to the south side of valley. Interestingly, the dam right is built right at the toe of this large slide.

Lithia Park

Ashland Creek flows right through downtown Ashland and the town has done a nice job of orienting walkways and restaurants along its edge. The best of these public spaces, and certainly the largest, is Lithia Park which extends a mile or two up from town. The lower part has playgrounds and artificial ponds and manicured gardens, but as you head upstream, the trails thin out and you are walking in the woods.

The geologist in me can't help but see a stream like this as a hazard. One really big rain storm sitting over the upper watershed for a few hours, after an already wet week, on top of a lot of wet snow, could probably do a lot of damage, both in the Park and in town. There have been some pretty big floods (1997, for example) and there are an awful lot of warning signs pointing uphill away from the creek bottom.

Ashland

After several years of weekend excursions in May to watch D play Ultimate, M has found that a long travel weekend in May is a fitting complement to her birthday. And who am I to argue. She did all the footwork and the bargain hunting. She got us cheap flights to Medford, an Impreza, and three nights at a hotel in downtown Ashland. We flew down early Thursday evening and flew home Sunday afternoon.

Ashland is an upscale town - with a college, a major Shakespeare venue, an up and coming outdoor recreation scene, and plenty of nice restaurants and galleries and coffee shops. Which makes it a bit of a contrast to much of the rest of this corner of Oregon. It's on I-5, or at least very close to it, and I suspect the next time we drive through on the way between Seattle and San Francisco, we'll detour through town.

We saw two plays, neither of them Shakespeare. Although Shakespeare in Love is about the guy and benefits from familiarity with his plays - Romeo and Juliet, in particular. Hannah and the Dread Gazebo was definitely not Shakespeare, but a really nicely done story of both Koreas, of confused ethnic identities, of immigration and language, and the discovery of family baggage. It was also a really neat example of how a potentially depressing plot line can be made very funny, yet remain meaningful.

As always, the trip involved food. Breakfasts at Morning Glory, Greenleaf, and Brother's. Dinner at Hearsay and Amuse. All were very good, some were better (Morning Glory and Hearsay). The healthy part is that we can usually skip lunch. The less healthy part is that we often need a snack by mid-afternoon. M discovered the lemon meringue tart thing at Mix Bakeshop. I tried several coffee places, but both the coffee and the coffee house were best at Noble Coffee Roasters in the Railroad District.

We spent a couple of hours walking through Lithia Park (another post) and an hour driving up into the hills to the east on Dead Indian Memorial Road.

Portland

On Monday, we stopped in Cannon Beach again, where we found a really nice piece of glasswork at Dragonfire and I filled up my coffee cup at the Sleepy Monk. Then we did the two hour drive to Portland.

This trip we tried out The Inn at Northrup Station in northwest Portland. It's colorful and whimsical and pretty perfect for us (thought walls are a bit thin). Big bowls of saltwater taffy and Starbursts in the common area. Free street car tickets - the street car goes right past. And free parking - which is a big plus compared with most city center options. It was a short walk up to 23rd and an easy street car into the Pearl District and downtown.

We had dinner one night at Paley's Place (right next door) and the next at Andina (always great, and packed). We had breakfast at Gravy Tuesday morning and at Jam on Hawthorne on Wednesday. We never really needed lunch, though I picked up a couple of donuts at Blue Star on the way out of town.

Between the eating and the coffee, we walked up into the creek above MacLeay Park and then drove up to the Pittock Mansion. Of course, we spent an evening at Powell's. M added to her list of books to check out from the library. I just bought more books. My favorite spot this trip was Dragonfly Coffee, on Thurman, which just felt like the perfect neighborhood coffee house. I was there twice.

Cannon Beach

We spent as much time in Cannon Beach as we did in Seaside itself. It's an easy 10-15 minute drive up and over the hill and it opened up a whole bunch of restaurant and coffee shop options. On Sunday, we had breakfast at The Lazy Susan and dinner later that day at Sweet Basil's. But on Saturday, we stuck to coffee (Insomnia and The Sleepy Monk) while we worked our way south from one beach to the next.

We went as far south as Hug Point State Park, where we scooted around the point between waves in order to get to the waterfall.

Ecola State Park

Saturday, now two weeks ago, turned out nicer than we had expected and we spent the day exploring. We began in Seaside with a long walk into town and back, but then got in the car and worked our way down through Cannon Beach as far as Hug Point.

Indian Beach is at the end of a winding landslide-prone road in Ecola State Park, on the south side of Tillamook Head. It seemed crowded, though probably not what it would have been on a warm summer weekend. A few folks were learning to surf and a lot of folks were just milling around in their fleece. M waited patiently while I wandered off the to far end of the beach to check out the landslides and the basalt cliffs and other beach stuff.