After saying goodbye to friends in SF and Oakland, I left the bay area by hopping on a late night train to Oregon. Okay, that’s a lie, because the train was over four hours late, so it didn’t leave until 2:30 in the morning. Truth be told, it wasn’t Amtrak’s fault; all the trains going through northern California and southern Oregon were delayed because of wildfires. As the train was passing through those areas, we could all see smoke, the smoldering remains of trees, and even a few distant fires.
Funny side note: during the long delay, as I sat on the floor of the train station, I was (digitally) flipping through the latest copy of WIRED, which included a short article on the latest technological advances in fighting wildfires. One such technology is a fuchsia-colored chemical flame retardant that is dumped on the fires from planes. The vivid color makes it clearer to firefighters exactly where the chemicals were applied. And sure enough, as the train passed through some very charred areas, large portions of the ground were colored fuchsia.
Crater Lake
Fiery forestry carnage aside, the ride was beautiful, filled with blue skies, mountains, and beautiful green foliage. A bit after noon I arrived in Klamath Falls, a reasonably-sized town that serves as a nice – and relatively cheap – base for exploring Crater Lake. In fact, it was such the cliche of small town America that I had trouble believing it was real. There was a main street, actually named Main Street, that ran through town and supported the vast majority of bars, restaurants, and shops. This is Oregon though, so there was the requisite vegetarian-friendly cafe and Thai restaurant, the town’s dinner hotspot. Not surprisingly, the restaurant at the bowling alley – which normally I wouldn’t go to but was the only place serving food after 10:00 – had several local microbrews on tap, which made the steady stream of country music slightly more tolerable.
For my one full day in the area, I drove to Crater Lake and spent the day hiking, enjoying the views, taking photos, and going on a ranger-guided tour at sunset. Fun fact from the tour: normally, the park experiences about 25 lightning-induced wildfires per year. Two Wednesdays ago, a thunderstorm rolled through the area and because of the incredibly dry conditions caused by the recent drought, there were 20 lightning-induced wildfires in one night.
I don’t want to use such a tired word, but Crater Lake is stunning. The water is just as blue in real life as it is in photos. Even after a full day in the park, I still wasn’t tired of gazing out at the tranquil water.
Portland
The next day I took an 8-hour train to Portland, only one hour late this time – a pretty standard Amtrak cushion – since the wildfires were contained at this point. After checking into my fantastic Airbnb in NE, I cleaned myself up and went back downtown to the Pearl for the monthly art walk. On the first Thursday of every month, a lot of the art galleries and shops stay open late and serve drinks. There was a lot of great art on display and one of the galleries was even serving pisco (the featured artist was Peruvian), but the most memorable part of the walk was actually the Upper Playground store. They had the highest quality – in terms of creativity – selection of clothing I think I’ve ever seen in one place. Don’t believe me? Check them out for yourself.
I was tired after a full day on the train – clearly not from all the drinks at the art walk – so I turned in to get an early start the next day. My first activity was some beautiful hiking around Mount Tabor, a park in the eastern part of the city that rests on a dormant volcano and serves as home to several of the city’s water reservoirs.
After a tasty lunch at Pok Pok – a very nice Thai restaurant that’s become a Portland institution – I ambled down the street to try some kava, a sedating drink from the South Pacific. It’s legality differs from country to country, but it’s legal in the U.S. for now. Perhaps I have a native tolerance to it, or perhaps I’m a huge alcoholic, because I didn’t feel anything after chugging a cup of it (which is how I was advised to drink it). Rather than throwing more money at the “problem”, I decided to plow ahead with my day instead.
I continued to wander west along Division St. until I reached the river, at which point I realized I was close to Hair of the Dog, a well-known brewery in town, so I stopped in to cool off and taste all their delicious beers. Rehydrated (dehydrated?) and fueled up, I crossed the river on foot and walked around downtown, which was setting up for the Bite of Oregon festival that was happening that weekend.
While in the area, I stopped by Mills End Park, the smallest park in the world.
After a trip back home to shower, change, and drop off my camera gear, I came back downtown in search of food and ended up grabbing a late dinner at Saithong Thai, one of many Thai restaurants in the area. Armed with a little bit of Thai speaking ability (enough to be polite, really), I started chatting with Saithong herself. When she said “Hello, how are you?” in Thai and I responded appropriately – and evidently fluently – she guffawed (like, actually guffawed) and jokingly yelled “White man can speak Thai!” (in Thai) into the kitchen.
My rudimentary Thai, plus stories from my travels, was enough to convince the staff that I really wanted and could handle their “Thai spicy” level of spiciness. As Saithong and I were chatting, the food came out and I started eating it. I realized two things at that moment: (1) this was spicier than anything I ate in Thailand and (2) this was the spiciest thing I had ever eaten in my entire life. My body’s response was to skip the sweating stage and go immediately to the crying stage, a stage I didn’t know existed until then.
Between all the day drinking and the nuclear war that was just set off in my mouth, the next 5-10 minutes are something of a blur, but I recall desperately trying to keep my shit together while casually making conversation with Saithong and her bartender, acting like it was totally normal for my eyes to be as watery as Niagara Falls. Luckily they had to step into the kitchen for a few moments, which gave me an opportunity to wipe the tears away before they started streaming down my face.
As I finished my meal, I very candidly told Saithong that I was crying from how spicy the food was, and she laughed and told me that they get their chilis from Mexico, which could possibly explain why they were more black in color. (I still think this is cheating, so now I don’t feel so bad for struggling with the heat.) As a reward/antidote, she treated me to a shot of Hennessy and we had a cheers and some more nice conversation with her staff before it was time for me to head out.
My destination that evening was Lola’s Room, a bar/club/venue in the Crystal Ballroom that has an “80s Video Dance Attack” party every Friday. While I enjoyed the big screens showing 80s music videos and the springy floor that bounced when everyone was dancing on it, the most interesting part of the evening was the crazy age range of the party-goers. I’m pretty sure I saw every age between 20 and 60 and everyone was very much enjoying themselves. After a little while there, I realized there was no “scenery” – an unfortunate common theme for me in Portland – so I bounced and caught one of the last trains home, quite content with how the day had panned out.
The big Saturday activity was a brewery-hopping bike tour with Pedal Bike Tours, an outfit that operates in both Portland and Hawaii. It served as a general tour of downtown Portland as well, with the occasional stop to tour a brewery or have some flights of delicious local beers. We also stopped by the Crystal Ballroom and Lola’s Room – about twelve hours after I was there for the 80s dance party – to take a tour and hear some really interesting Portland history involving prohibitionists, boat parties, fires, hippies, and bans on dancing (where’s Kevin Bacon when you need him?). After the tour was over and we went back to the bike shop, we had some more beer tastings; some of the beer was on tap at the shop and some of it was homebrewed by our tour guide. As we were drinking and chatting, our tour guide also offered up a restaurant recommendation based on how good their pickling was. No, really, I can’t make this up. The whole afternoon was more Portlandia than Portlandia.
Very late in the afternoon, I hopped on a bus across the city to track down Red & Black Cafe, a restaurant that evidently serves up a mean vegan Reuben. Unfortunately, when I finally found the place, I also found that they were permanently closed because they couldn’t afford to pay their rent. Disappointed, I took to Yelp to find an alternative, walked to a bar down the street called Hungry Tiger, looked over their menu, and saw… a vegan Reuben. It was delightful. Spiced tempeh instead of pastrami, really good rye/pumpernickel swirl bread, a mountain of homemade fries, and, of course, a pickle.
Fueled by beer and an excellent meal, I walked about an hour to get home, where I promptly PTFO’d. What was initially going to be a half-hour power nap turned into a 12-hour golden slumber. I felt a little silly for missing out on Saturday night in the city, but felt pretty damn good Sunday morning and decided to make the most of it.
I got up early and took the train out to Washington Park, one of the larger parks in the city. There are lots of trails winding through the park, an arboretum, a zoo, Japanese gardens, and the International Rose Test Garden, one of the world’s largest rose gardens. For about five hours, minus an hour for brunch at a nice spot just outside the park, I hiked around the arboretum and gardens on a beautiful day.
About mid-afternoon, I caught a train back towards downtown to make a Portland Underground tour I had booked. I had about half an hour of free time, so I stopped in to Ground Kontrol, a classic arcade and bar, because alcohol always makes everything better and video games are no exception to that. This was a good chance to dispose of the gross, soggy singles in my wallet and I entertained myself for a little while with $4 worth of pinball, NFL Blitz, and some really old Mario.
The Portland Underground tour was pretty fascinating, both because of the historical content and the paranormal stories. The tour goes beneath a few of the buildings downtown and covers the history of Shanghaiing and white slavery in Portland. Most of the stories are too depressing or grisly to repeat here, so let’s just say that it wasn’t a pleasant experience for anyone involved. Because so many people died in the underground, there are many ghost stories told by those that conduct the tours and those that work in the buildings above. Unfortunately, nothing paranormal happened on our tour, but our guide had many stories of strange things happening to tour guests over the years, like being pushed or pulled, hearing whistling, seeing shadows or trails of nonexistent people, and smelling cigar smoke or a very specific scent of perfume.
That evening, I met up with my aunt and uncle (and their dogs), who live across the river in Vancouver, WA. We had a delicious Sunday BBQ dinner in the backyard at sunset and caught up over beers and port, though it hadn’t been that long since I saw them last (Tampa in May).
My last two days in the city were a bit more mellow – I had to catch up on some laptop work and do laundry – but still very Portlandish. I had met another solo traveler at the underground tour, so she and I visited a couple museums in the afternoons and also went to one of the many food cart clusters in the city. I was all set on Vietnamese when I had made it about 95% of the way around the circle of carts, until I saw the Georgian food cart at the end of the line. Since it was the only cuisine there I hadn’t tried before, I went for their veggie sampler plate. I’d say it was a cross between Mediterranean and Eastern European and quite decent.
On Monday night, I met up with my very good bay area friend Mo (who was in town for a couple days for work) and his two coworkers for some Thai food, beers, and American Ninja Warrior. The next day I finally made it to one of the many independent theaters in town that serve food and beer (a.k.a. “brew-and-views”) and saw Edge of Tomorrow, the recent Tom Cruise sci-fi flick. I always like his sci-fi movies so, not surprisingly, I liked this one, especially since it was only $4 for the ticket and I could order pizza slices and many delicious IPAs during the movie.
It was during these two days that Robin Williams passed and many people wrote tributes to him, so I feel like he deserves a mention here since he was in my thoughts a lot. My Facebook post sums up my feelings pretty well, so I’ll just copy and paste it here.
I’ve been busy lately with traveling and trip planning to really meditate on the passing of Robin Williams, but when I do get a chance, my thoughts always come back to Hook, which I watched an ungodly number of times as a child and teenager. Even then, I was struck by how deep it went, especially for a “kids’ movie”. Or maybe it was just my interpretation. The themes of the inevitability of death, staying young at heart, and making the most of your time have always come through stronger in that movie than any other I’ve seen. And the quiet sadness that seemed to surround him (both in and out of character) seems so much louder in retrospect. Bangarang in peace Robin.
With that, my time in Portland came to a close and I hopped on a train for a ride to Seattle, where I’m currently writing this post under the dullness of a grey, gloomy sky. Portland is just as green (in both senses of the word), recycling-friendly, vegetarian-friendly, tattooed, hippie, and hipster as I thought it would be. Weird? Maybe, but I lived in San Francisco for five years, so it’s all relative. What I do know is that I had an awesome time exploring the city and met a lot of incredibly friendly and open people. One thing that has stuck with me is the fact that Portland is probably the friendliest and most community-oriented big city I’ve ever been in, which is quite the feat. If the city has to be weird to accomplish that, then I’ll be the first to say:
