Hi friends! Sorry for the late NOT. I had to go to Aldi after work and then since I was out of prepped food for tomorrow, I needed to cook something so I have lunch because otherwise I will make unhealthy choices.
Recommendations post – anything you’re wondering about? Anything you have found recently that you want to share how awesome it is? (Or how horrible it is?)
I found out a dear friend is having a life event* in Portland, Oregon, this summer and I will be flying out to attend. I am all about masks and will be getting my second vaccine shot in about 3 weeks, so I want to use this this as an opportunity to have a mini-vacation for myself.
Folks who have lived there/travelled there, would you recommend doing that sort of thing? I will have a rental car and what I’d like to do is check out outdoor stuff. Easy hiking would also be cool. Like I was thinking of adding 2 or 3 days to the trip to do some exploring.
*event will be both outdoors and masked and their social circle respects personal space
I’ve never been to that Portland so I’ve got nothing to recommend.
This being winter I highly recommend LL Bean’s flannel lined jeans. 10/10.
I’ve heard those recommended from a few people. However even pre-pandemic I have been a stretchy pants lifestyle and I have always hated jeans.
That being said I’m wearing fleece-lined leggings I got from Aldi last week for $8 and I highly recommend those. 🙂
I pretty much wear jeans every day, but I can’t recommend them for bad weather or outdoor activities. cotton kills, and all that.
I’ve got a couple pair of “travel pants” made out of some synthetic fabric that doesn’t absorb much water for when I go backpacking or something. I’ve also got a set of polyester fleece pants that I use when backpacking/camping, and some synthetic long underwear.
I love Portland, great restaurants, beer culture, & weird residents. You can learn almost everything from the documentary series Portlandia.
I’ve never hiked in Oregon other than Mt Hood snowboard hiking, which I recommend going up to Mt Hood but it is a long drive from Portland. Cannon Beach is about an hour & 1/2 away & also well worth the drive. If u send me a message about where specifically you will be I can talk to my Portland buddies to get u specific neighborhood info. It is like NYC in that way but way smaller scale.
And if you are a book worm, you can spend days at Powell’s, the most amazing bookstore I have ever seen!
https://www.powells.com/
Thanks! I have no clue of any of those details yet!
My wife went to Crater Lake the summer before the darkness arrived. It is a healthy drive from Portland (fourish hours) but she said it was really, really cool out there.
As a kid my family drove through the Columbia River Valley, including Portland, and I still remember how beautiful so much of it is. I think either East or West you can’t go wrong.
Crater lake & Bend are amazing but far from Portland. Most good hikes are at least an hour to 3 hours from Portland.
When I was a kid and my parents drove us around out west, I was bummed that they didn’t take the detour to Crater Lake, but I didn’t really appreciate back then how insanely vast the distances were.
I’m glad though that we did take our kids a few summers ago around and through Yellowstone, and since the theme of this is post is recommendations, I can recommend without reservations going to Yellowstone and the surrounding region. Do it with kids, do it alone, do it on a tour bus when you’re 99 years old.
This is exactly the kind of thing you see:
https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2020/03/26/reporter-vs-bison-herd-montana-travel-orig-ch.cnn
We camped in our RV in Yellowstone for a week & it was amazing. We went the first week of June before the crowds, still some snow in our campsites but lots of baby animals just coming out. Bison were everywhere but highlight was seeing pack of wolves take out a baby elk. Disturbing & mesmerizing but just incredible.
Frozen chocolate covered fruit.
https://trufru.com
I’ve only tried the cherries but they’re pretty good. I don’t eat a lot of sweets but these are bite size so I can grab a couple when I do want something.
Seeing as I missed out on the under-rated movies & tv shows NOT and this is a “recommendations” NOT I figure I can get two birds stoned at once and say that I recommend the TV show “Timeless.” It only lasted two seasons before it got cancelled but they had enough of a die-hard fan base (of course I didn’t know at the time because I don’t become aware of shows until they’re off the air and I still have no clue what Throne Games is about) to force them to wrap up the show with a finale after it got cancelled which, imo, is pretty rewarding.
It can be annoying at times for those who tear time travel movies/shows apart with their knowledge of physics. Fuck those people (I’m one of them) because if I can get over it, they can get over it!
It really is a very good and very under-rated show that I highly recommend.
never been to portland…soo cant help you there
really..ive only ever seen oklahoma and a little bit of texas (fort worth…good music venues)
and the main thing i reccomend for oklahoma is to get inside if you see a wall cloud aproaching (learnt that one the hard way me…..finding a nice big open space to go look at the awesome rolling wall of cloud is not the correct thing to do)
sooo…ummm…i got nothing helpful today
When all this pandemic is over my family will go on a road trip for a month or two. We’ve already got Yellowstone, PCH, the Grand Canyon/big Utah & CO national parks, Vegas and LA on the docket. If the borders are open we’re riding north of Vancouver and cutting back east through the Canadian Rockies, returning through MN or MI.
Then we set our sights on Asia & Europe.
Portland is a great place to visit.
– The Rose Garden in Washington Park is highly regarded.
– The Japanese Garden is also great, also in Washington Park.
– Forest Park is the largest urban park in the county, lined with trails for hiking and biking. It’s where Portlanders go to get outdoors without leaving the city limits.
– I will second @loveshaq, to visit Powells Books. It is a lot of fun, if a little overwhelming for a book hoarder like me.
– Great food and beverage there as well. This article has a lot of suggestions that I would like to try at some point. (OK, I’m not going to do an escape room. Fine. Plenty of other ideas.)
And here’s where I put the note about, “check with these places activities to make sure they are open during the pandemic,” etc. Have fun. Portland is really great in the summer.
I DO NOT recommend polar vortexes. The weather here for the next week is going to be 15, 12, 6, 15, 15, 11, 10 (Farenheit, daytime highs). No bueno.
@brighterside: I love Portland, OR. Seconding the recommendation to visit Powell’s in person if it is open. During the before times, it was open late and was definitely the sort of place you could spend all day, with ample nooks or shelving areas that invite sitting and reading. Forest Park, as others have mentioned, is also a jewel not too far from the city centre, while Washington Park is terrific with several attractions within it (like the Japanese Garden) that is very walkable from downtown. [If you were visiting during non-pandemic times, I would also encourage you to go to a Portland Timbers MLS game, because MLS is incredibly popular locally and the Timbers tend to be highly ranked in the MLS.]
Impressive food and drink are available in abundance, so I’ll quickly recommend Paley’s Place for dinner and Heart Coffee Roasters for coffee. There are so many other places as well. Portland has great, fresh, affordable food everywhere you turn.
If you’re swinging by NW Portland and want to go shopping, check out Folly. In the Pearl District in the downtown area, there is also an abundance of places to shop. If you want local wares for the tourist who doesn’t want cheesy souvenirs, try Made Here PDX. And, time permitting, check out East Portland as well–it has a great neighbourhood feel to it.
Oh, and if you’re a vintage lover, there are so many wonderful shops all over the place. I’m hoping most of them are still open and making it through COVID.