Portland, OR

where we crossed the Canadian/US border and made it to Oregon in one day

When we’d first planned our road trip down the west coast we had reckoned on a few days in Seattle. Just as we were packing to leave Vancouver however we made a snap decision to drive straight on past Seattle and spend our first night a few hours further south in Portland instead. We figure that if we did end up being based in Vancouver for a while then we could always visit Seattle for a weekend trip. It’s only a few hours down the road after all. So on a whim, Portland became our first destination.

Before leaving Vancouver we had one very important thing to do – pick up our new car! We went to get it the morning we were leaving but were met with a few small niggles to sort out with it along with our insurance policy. It was 2pm by the time everything was done and we were finally on the road, out of Vancouver and heading south for the border.

Apart from a short pull in for fuel along the way (not as easy as you’d think to find a service station despite all the promising signs!!) we had a pretty straight forward drive to the Canada/US border. Fuel prices are far cheaper in the US than Canada so it pays to wait till south of the border to fill up. Unfortunately with a low fuel light we had no choice but to pull in while still in Canada.

We crossed over the border into the States at the Blaine Peace Arch. The first customs officer we spoke to was the type of nightmare customs officer you get every now and again who makes you wonder if hostility is part of their training or whether they just found their dream job. Maybe this routine does work to root out the occasional bad guy, hard to know… After a few minutes answering some blunt and odd questions we were directed to a secondary inspection area where we found all the other non-Canadians/non-Americans parked up and waiting ahead of us. Given the first encounter we expected more of the same here but in a total contrast we met a really cheerful guy who even seemed excited for us and our trip, even to the point of offering us advice on what sights we should check out along the way. Maybe they were working a good cop/bad cop routine or maybe the first guy was just annoyed because he was left out in the sun all day… We’d completed our ESTA temporary visa application online before leaving Ireland and it made the whole process that bit easier. Some fingerprint scans, a photo, a check of our passports against our ESTAs, some questions about finances, a few dollars of a fee ($6 each) and we were done. All in all we were through the border in less than 45 minutes and most of that was due to the amount of traffic going through.

As we drove away from the border and south through Washington state we felt a fresh wave of excitement. We were in the US and the next part of our trip had begun.

Two things about this part of the journey stood out – the absolute greenness of the Washington landscape along the interstate and the rain. It rained and rained and rained for the majority of our drive through Washington State, absolutely bucketing down at times. If we’d been driving on the other side of the road we would have felt right at home. It’s possible that we just caught the place on a bad day.

We’ll have to hold off on saying too much more about Washington state for the moment because we barely left the interstate. The only time we did was for food in a chain restaurant, Bob’s Burgers, that was never going to make for the most culturally insightful of pit stops but it helped us stay out of McDonalds at least. We did however drive through Seattle, got caught in some traffic and saw the Seattle Space Needle – again, all in the midst of a down pouring of rain – but that was the height of our exploring. The roads were good, the few people we met were welcoming, the views were green and the rain was plentiful. This was a dash through, we’ll be back again sometime and should be able to give a better account of it then.

It was well after dark by the time we reached Portland and we’d driven a total of 512 km since leaving Vancouver that same afternoon. We’d hoped to avoid long trips and night-time driving as much as possible but the delay leaving and the change of mind between staying in Portland versus Seattle kept us on the road a little later than we’d hoped. Not to worry, it was something to improve on as the road trip continues.

The Google map app was unbeatable as a sat nav on the trip down and having loaded it while in wifi we were able to follow the route without using expensive roaming data on our Irish phone SIM cards. It brought us right to the door of our accommodation and it’s difficult to think our journey down would have been as easy without it.

On hearing we’d be so late-ish arriving (it was half 10 when we reached Portland) our Airbnb host, Michael, had sent through excellent written instructions via email of how to let ourselves in and settle down for the night. As it turned out, the Airbnb room was in a chalet separate from the house which suited us fine because it meant we weren’t waking anyone in the otherwise dark house with our late arrival. Certainly not night owls these hosts of ours.

To switch it up a little bit – and learning from our Vancouver experience – we’d decided to stay in a different place on our second night in Portland. Waking up early-ish, we headed for the other Airbnb to park the car and go into town for some exploring. The drive up to the Portland Hills was a bit of a treat. Like a lot of cities, these hills are where a lot of the city’s wealthier people live and the size and styles of the houses reflect it. When we pulled up outside the house we were feeling pretty optimistic with the standard we could expect from our night’s lodging. We happily locked up the car and strolled back down the hill towards downtown.

On our way down we happened on one of the tourist attractions that we’d read about – the International Rose Test Garden – and we quickly realised that we could take a shortcut to downtown by walking right through the gardens. Aside from being a nice walk, this is a definite tourist attraction and even on a Wednesday morning the gardens were full of snap happy visitors of all ages.

Portland’s unofficial but heavily promoted motto is “Keep Portland Weird” and you definitely get a sense of it as soon as you walk further into the city. You see it in the street art, the shops and even in the people themselves. It certainly feels different to other cities it’s size and, in a positive way, the city for the most part feels more like a town and the friendliness of the people you meet reflects that too.

Powell’s City of Books is a bookshop in Portland and you need to visit if you’ve even a passing interest in books. To call it a bookshop actually does it a disservice because as the name suggests it’s far more than that. It’s enormous, takes up a whole city block and is a few stories high too. We spent hours in there, far too long considering how little time we planned to spend in Portland but it was just so hard to drag ourselves away from browsing the massive selection of books. We didn’t see every part of the building or all the books and you could probably lose days in there if you tried to get around to all the different departments. Another nice part of Powell’s is the cafe with it’s cheap but decent coffee and all the time you want to read books from the shop. You could easily lose yourself for another few hours in the cafe reading through your fresh purchases, settled amongst all the other readers doing the very same.

After Powell’s we cranked the tourist thing to the max and stood in line at Voodoo Doughnuts. There was an actual line into this doughnut shop, that’s just how famous it is. We normally skip over attractions that have excessive lines leading up to them but this one seemed to be moving quickly enough – that and the sight of the donuts being eaten outside was enough to convince us that they were worth a few minutes of waiting. At the top of that line what you get is a huge pink box full of the nicest doughnuts you’re likely to ever taste. We had two of them scoffed down before we were two blocks away.

After we picked up our doughnuts we went and got some koftas and falafels from a street in a row of street carts. It was street food from a cart we picked at random because it seemed to be slightly busier than the others in the row. It was ok. Enough said.

A real oddity in Portland is the “World’s Smallest Park”, certainly earning it’s title and although it is charming, it may not be worth trekking across the entire city to see it. It was set up as a joke many many years ago by a guy who noticed from his office window that a the hole for a street pole on a traffic island wasn’t reused after some roadworks. He decided to plant the incredibly small plot and..well…that’s how you get the world’s smallest park. We were glad we the made the trek across town for it – it definitely seemed very Portlandy.

All that after our day of sightseeing was to climb back up the hill and check out our Airbnb for the night – an excellent way to work off the Voodoo Doughnuts from earlier and make room for the ones still in the box yet to be eaten. When we reached the house and knocked on the front door the host met us and after a bit of friendly chitchat directed us to the side of the house and down the “North steps” (we were immediately intrigued by this grandiose description…) to where a separate entrance would bring us in to our room. The room turned out to be part of an entire apartment which was closed off to the rest of the house and took up most of one story of the 5 story house. The room itself was amazing and based on sheer luxury alone we both agreed it was the best Airbnb place we’d stayed in.

Portland was great. It was as weird in spots – as we’d heard – and there was plenty we didn’t get around to. It was time though to hit the road again and travel down some of Oregon’s beautiful Pacific coast. But not before we made use of Oregon’s lack of sales tax and stopped into a few places to buy camping gear so we could “rough it” later on on the trip.

Our next destination (and the next blog post) was the Itty Bitty Inn in North Bend, Oregon just beside Coo’s Bay and after that, onto the Red Woods of California.

 

our next destination: North Bend, OR ⇒