Portland welcomed us with a slightly gloomy and rainy day. We left our place and headed to the city to walk around and immerse ourselves in all of the touristy attractions. First stop, Powell’s Book Store. We grabbed a coffee and did some work while watching the rain fall to the city streets. After managing to escape the store with only 3 books, we put our rain jackets on, stuffed our laptops and books into my backpack and began our walk through downtown.
We stopped into the Patagonia and Danner stores, Noelle allowed me to nerd out about gear. We then went to Voodoo donuts to check that off of the tourist checklist. The store was cute and the donuts were pretty average but overall a cool walk downtown. We went back to the house for a little nap and then left for the city again to meet up with Monet and Ryan for tacos at Tacovore (food 7.5/10, company 10/10). Monet convinced us we needed to get ice cream so we went to Salt & Straw and boy was she right. Before you even saw the store you were greeted with the warm smell of fresh waffle cones. I got the Mango Habanero IPA and Vanilla scoop (9/10) and Noelle got a Rhubarb Crumble and Cinnamon scoop (9.5/10). We walked around town with our desserts before saying bye and heading home for some much rest.
We absolutely love our stay on the west side of Portland. It’s in a nice quiet and charming neighborhood that feels like you are in a forest one moment then at a community garden in another. Our hosts were so kind and sweet, they shared with us some spots on our roadtrip such as the Chico hot springs up in northern Yellowstone, We will definitely be hitting that on our way up there.
Our next day we headed north to Washington! Our goal was to see Mt. Saint Helens! The drive took us through Woodland Washington which also had a Taqueria Guadalajara….. eerie.
The drive up Spirit Lake highway was amazing, amazing views of the river and the valley that was devastated with water and mud and ash from the eruption in 1980. Now summer camps and small towns are back in the same warpath the volcano claimed 40 years ago.
We ended up on the snowy top of Johnston ridge and drove out to the observation deck. Turns out we were not suppose to do that… oops no one else was there, and a ranger was kind and understood the mistake and told us to just park in the lot adjacent.
At the observatory we were lucky to see just the bottom of the mountain. No majestic peak here either, absorbed by the dense fog the crater was not visible. We enjoyed some light snow, followed the water and valley freshly carved into the earth. We spent that morning enjoying the peace before heading back to Oregon.
A quick stop at the PDX REI and then a restful afternoon spent at the AirBnB. We were ready to hit the road again and we had Smith Rock in our sights.
