Wow... time is flying by! While in Portland, we realized that we were exactly half-way through our 30-day road trip. It was a bittersweet realization, for while we are not eager to end our adventures, we are excited about the idea of transitioning back "home" to Nashville.
Here was our first view of the city of Portland... a bit larger than the little hippie town we had in our minds!
We stayed at an amazing B&B the Everett House ($90 a night!) just outside of downtown, and the first night we went to a TripAdvisor recommended restaurant just a few blocks away for some good ole' southern cooking! It was called the Screen Door (very creative name for the South, we thought), and after we had waited an hour to get a table, we had worked up quite an appetite! Nevertheless, the barbeque beef brisket, green beans, potato salad, asparagus custard, and triple-layer lemon curd and coconut cake with strawberry-rhubarb ice cream sure filled us up!
We headed downtown the next morning, and throughout the day, we found Portland to live up to the saying that was part of a huge outdoor mural, "Keep Portland Weird." Good job, Portland... in our eyes, you have succeeded.
Here was a fun musical group we passed as we walked through the Portland Saturday Craft Market (although it was Sunday). They were called "Bottom of the Barrel," and we were really impressed by the girl playing the handsaw like a violin (on the far right).
We accidentally happened upon this famous donut shop and apparently arrived at a lucky moment, because although we were not about to wait in the line wrapping around the building just to buy a donut, some guy came out with a box full and offered us a free one. We tried one with an oreo topping... couldn't finish it, but didn't feel so bad about throwing the rest away since we didn't pay for it.
We also couldn't miss the "Portland Pride" parade downtown... let's just say it was very interesting.
We made a stop at the famous Stumptown Coffee Roasters.
And we had to go to this HUGE warehouse of books that is just as popular for locals as it is for tourists... ironically, we spent the majority of our time in the Travel section.
Thanks again to Trip Advisor, we found this down-home-cooking restaurant called "Mother's" to eat at for Father's Day (again, the irony...).
And we finished our afternoon with a FREE visit to the International Rose Test Garden. It was pretty unbelieveable... we are posting some of our favorite colors here... but they were all beautiful.
My favorite...
Kris's favorite... called "Ketchup and Mustard."
A good poem at the Garden... hope you can read it.
For a small dinner, we enjoyed tapas and a dessert at a this cute cafe called Pix Patisserie run by a French pastry chef. The dessert below was called Shazaam and was dark chocolate surrounding a thin layer of chocolate cake with caramel mousse on top and with more caramel sauce and almonds in the middle... yes, it was yummy in our tummies!
After leaving Portland, we decided to take the longer route down the famous Highway 101, along the Oregon and California coastlines. This was one of our first of many gorgeous beach pics.
At a viewpoint called Strawberry Hill, we found this group of sea lions out sunning.
And we saw LOTS more sea stars...
Caught a decent picture of this lighthouse...
And the LONG coastline...
By the time we entered California, it was getting pretty foggy, so we went ahead and made our way to our campsite for the night in Jedediah Smith State Park, among the Redwoods.
The following morning we went on a short hike not far from our campsite to see a famous grove of Redwoods... and we had thought the trees in Olympic were tall!
This actually turned out to be a pretty interesting hike, because what was labeled on the map as a "footbridge" was still covered with river water. We though it would just be knee-deep... but by the time we got close to the other side, we were already up to our chests in it!
A couple of perspective pics to show the impressive size of these trees...
One of the coolest things we saw were lots of "nurse trees" that once fallen, serve as a bed of nutrients for new trees to take root.
Again, it was pretty foggy first thing in the morning...
We did a short hike to "Hidden Beach," and it was pretty well hidden, because we were the only ones there!
Just thought this was a cool photo as we drove along...
And at approximate 1,500 years old, this one definitely lived up to it's title... "Big Tree."
Our next stop was in the very unique and famous Fern Canyon, where ferns covered all sides up to 50 feet tall!
Got a good up-close pic of this red frog...
And we ended our day with a drive through the famed Avenue of the Giants. We could not capture the sheer magnitude of the trees and forest around us in photos... we took some video out of the sunroof which probably provides the best perspective, but we couldn't download it here.
That night, we pushed on through to San Francisco, arriving at about 11PM at the fun, old-timey Hotel Mayflower right downtown.
As we walked around the city the next day, we decided to re-name this place "City of Hills." The steep up- and downhills somewhat took us back to our hikes in the Valley.
We enjoyed a lunch at the Boudin Bakery, famous for its sourdough.
And we enjoyed some time in the Fisherman's wharf area, exploring the different piers and the animals that inhabited them...
We decided last minute to book a ride on this catamaran called the "Sea Cat." We thoroughly enjoyed our 90-minute sailboat ride around the San Francisco harbor!
Here, we got some good views of the famous prison at Alcatraz...
The Golden Gate Bridge...
And the city itself...
Closer views of the bridge...
And a large container ship coming in from China...
And they even let Kris steer us back to the pier!
That afternoon, we stopped by the crooked Lombard street, before finishing the evening at a great hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant recommended by Kris's sister-in-law, called Trattoria Contadina.
On our way out of San Fran the next morning, we headed to the nearby town of Sausalito for breakfast and stopped to get a few more pics of the Bridge...
This was a memorial to all sailors who had sailed out of the San Francisco Harbor...
And because we felt I was looking especially pregnant this day, we even got a "pregnant pic" along the way...
In Sausalito, we enjoyed a delicious breakfast at Fred's Place, kinda like a local Waffle House... but with much higher quality food (but maybe not any healthier)!
What a beautiful feat of architectural and engineering ingenuity!
We are currently enjoying some rest days in the quaint little beach town of Carmel, but we will soon begin our trek East toward Yosemite and on to southern Utah...
No comments:
Post a Comment