We took a three-week road trip around the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2017, and I am recounting our trip in a series of blog posts. You can read the previous post here: Ashland
Days 4 – 6: Portland, OR
We left Ashland on August 21st and headed north to our next destination: Portland. About an hour into the trip we made a split second decision to go out of our way to visit Crater Lake. There were fires blazing all around the PNW at the time so our view of the lake was impeded by a thin veil of smoke, but we enjoyed the chance to stretch our legs at an overlook area. Cosmo was fascinated by the fearless chipmunks that approached us and observed them with an expression of polite confusion (do I attack or run away?).
I was ready to fall in love with Portland. LA hipsters seem to enjoy talking about how awesome Portland is, and for years I have heard stories about this magical land of bicycle lanes, militant environmentalism, and craft breweries. It seemed too good to be true. I was worried that the hype wouldn’t live up to the reality. In the end, Portland totally exceeded my expectations.
That being said, I do believe that one’s experience of a place is influenced greatly by one’s mindset or mood at the time. When viewed through the lens of a sour disposition, even the most vibrant cities can yield a bland experience. I have gone through some difficult times in my life in some beautiful, exciting cities and that certainly colors my memories of those places. Now as I reflect back on our time in Portland, I do think my enjoyment of the city was informed by my mental state at the time. When we arrived in Portland we had been on our journey for less than a week and were not yet annoyed by the constant packing and unpacking. Portland was also one of our longer stay destinations (three nights) and it helped a lot to know that we would be settling in there for a while.
We had sprung for a nice AirBnB in the heart of the NW 23rd district. Not being a Portland local, I imagine that the NW 23rd is one of those neighborhoods that Portland Purists despise for its inauthenticity. I mean, it has a Crate & Barrel. Enough said. We have those neighborhoods in LA, too. Places where condos and coffee shops spring up seemingly overnight, and there are plenty of LA Purists who give a hard side-eye to the latest “cool” thing popping up in their neighborhood (I know I used to).
I feel like this sketch from Portlandia illustrates it best.
We actually loved staying in NW 23rd. There was plentiful access to public transportation, food, and shopping right outside our door. On our first afternoon in Portland we popped into a restaurant around the corner from our AirBnB. It was a Tuesday so there weren’t many people inside, and the restaurant was about to close for the afternoon anyway. Our waiter ended up being an LA transplant himself, and we chatted with him for a while about the differences between Portland and LA. When we mentioned that we had a pretty flexible itinerary for our stay in Portland, he proceeded to give us a hand-written list of his favorite restaurants, breweries, and bars. That list would become our guide for the next few days.
That night, the list led us a dimly lit, tiki-inspired establishment called Rum Bar where we sat next to a girl biker gang and sipped the most delicious rum cocktails for hours. The next evening, the list led us to what is now one of my favorite bars outside of LA: Kelly’s Olympian. A pinky above a traditional dive bar and its interior brightly lit with dozens of neon signs, Kelly’s Olympian has an atmosphere of friendly un-pretentiousness. I absolutely adored that place.
Before I give the impression that we went to Portland and just drank ourselves to death, please rest assured that we did not spend our days in the city nursing hangovers. Not at all. The weather was beautiful and we took every opportunity to be outside and enjoy ourselves.
Unlike LA, Portland has an extensive bike lane network and it seems like the drivers there actually expect/respect cyclists. One day. we set out to rent a couple of the plentifully available orange Biketown city bikes with the intention of riding down to the waterfront together. Cosmo had never been on a bicycle in his backpack before, but we were confident that he could manage the journey fine.
For those of you who don’t know, I injured my right knee pretty badly back in July and had been wearing a knee brace for six weeks when we arrived in Portland. I was feeling confident without the brace for the first time since my accident, so I thought I could handle a bicycle. Nope. My knee reached the peak of the pedal stroke and I knew it was a bad idea. No cycling for me. We decided that I would take an Uber and we would all meet on the waterfront. I was disappointed that I couldn’t ride alongside Alex and Cosmo as they navigated the bike lanes through Portland, but I was determined not to hurt myself again by doing something stupid. As we predicted, Cosmo handled the ride like a champ and seemed only vaguely aware that he was on a bike at all.
Recently, when I tell people that I took a three-week road trip with my husband, some of them remark “And you’re still married?!”, “You didn’t kill each other?!” and variations on that theme. I totally get it. I will be the first to tell you (and Alex will be the second) that I am not a pleasant and graceful person when under pressure. Knowing this, I take a leisurely approach to travel and try not to put too much pressure on myself to see and do all the things.
In Portland, we started allowing ourselves some time apart from each other. We walked around the city a lot together, but also made a point to separate and do some solo exploring. Going into this trip, we knew that 24 days would be a long time to spend together with no time to ourselves. I’m pretty introverted by nature (yes, I do realize that statement is ironic considering I have this blog) and I frequently need time to myself for rejuvenation. Alex and I communicated a lot about how we would approach our, for lack of a better word, togetherness on this trip and we agreed that planning time apart would help alleviate any pressure on our relationship. Also, we realized that having Cosmo with us meant that someone would likely need to stay behind with him while the other person went and did something that wasn’t dog-friendly. This arrangement ended up working out great and I will make a point in future posts to explore this topic further. I think it was a huge contributor to how well we communicated, coordinated, and survived this trip with our marriage in-tact.
I loved Portland. It was everything I wanted it to be and more. The undercurrent of weirdness was comforting to me because it didn’t feel competitive. The odd things we encountered were odd in their own unique way and existed independently, not in comparison, with other odd things. I dug it. Hard.
I think the Uber driver that brought us safely back home from Rum Bar summed it up perfectly: “Every movement or trend that has come and gone in the last 30 years is still being kept alive by someone in Portland.”
I respect that.
The next installment can be found here!
