Yesterday through this morning was the
seventh trip I have ever taken to Portland, the fifth in which I stayed at least one night. This also makes Portland, just as it was when I had been there six times, the city I have visited
eighth-most often, after Los Angeles (55 times); New York City (17 times); Vancouver, B.C. (12 times); Palm Springs (10 times); San Francisco (8 times); Las Vegas (8 times); and Victoria, B.C. (8 times).
I am finding that, after early visits to Portland made it seem like a relatively quiet and unexciting city, I am managing to make trips there much more fun with each successive time I go. Within the years post-covid, I have now visited Portland three times, and each of these three times I have done enough things to create
separated sets for different activities and attractions visited during each visit. This even includes 2022, when I merely took a solo day trip there and back on the train, for my "trains" themed Birth Week that year—I still got three photo albums out of that one-day visit. I got six albums out of the anniversary trip Shobhit and I took there in 2021, when we stayed two nights; we only stayed one night this visit was just returned from this afternoon, and even that one I managed to get
five different photo albums out of:
Portland Downtown 2025 (44 shots)
Portland Aerial Tram 2025 (44 shots)
The Paramount Hotel Portland 2025 (26 shots)
Multnomah County (Portland) Central Library (18 shots)
Mount Tabor Park 2025 (23 shots)
That totals 155 shots for this trip, the
most of any trip to Portland—even though we stayed a day longer back in 2021 (and I took a total of 143 shots). I guess I'm just getting a lot more efficient at packing a lot into a short amount of time.
So let's go through it!
First I'll mention the hotel we stayed at, which is shown in the photo above:
The Paramount Hotel, a 15-story hotel located downtown. We requested as high a floor as possible, and it's always a crapshoot how high we'll get when we make that request—but, they put us on the 14th floor, second from the top! That made me very happy. Not only that, but although presumably a room directly facing Director Park, which is on the block in front of the hotel, would probably have afforded the best view, we were given a room on the northwest corner, one setback from the front in the building's architecture. This effectively gave us views both north
and west—and to a degree, if you stood to the far right of the window, southwest—through two different windows.
I was so happy with the view from our room, in fact, that I made an impromptu decision to
include it in my official list of "Observation Decks and Viewpoints" as part of my Birth Week theme this year—making it the second of
three that I included from Portland.
I actually think there is a subtle charm to the architectural design of the exterior of the Paramount Hotel, which is apparently "
European-style." It has a
fairly grand lobby space, and when we took Evan through it much later last night (I'll get to Evan later), they said, "Wow, this is a fancy hotel!"
The room, which I meant to take photos of the interior rather than just the views out the windows and I totally forgot, was not particularly huge; it had space for a desk, the dresser with the TV on it, the bed with two small night stands, a chair with ottoman, a small closet, and a bathroom that had both a shower stall and a tub large enough for two, was not very big. Shobhit found himself contemplating whether it had been worth the expense. The one-night stay had been barely more than $100 and that was after applying $37 in rewards on Hotels.com. But, considering the views, and the unusually spacious bathroom for the size of the room overall, I think it was totally worth it. I had a lovely time staying there, and that counts for something, doesn't it?
Official check-in at The Paramount Hotel is not until 4:00 p.m., and we left Seattle early enough that we found a parking garage in downtown Portland just after noon. Just like we did last time Shobhit and I stayed in Portland together, we just found a parking garage with daily rates and left the car there, relying on either walking or public transit for the duration of our stay, rather than potentially having to pay for parking at a bunch of different places. As it happens, this time we never even got on public transit—yesterday at least, we simply walked everywhere.
The room was not ready for us, though we asked, when we arrived. Still, we took our bags to the lobby and checked them in to store them there until we could come back and check in. Thus unburdened, we set out on foot for the first point of interest that was my primary reason for wanting to come to Portland this week to begin with, as it fit with my theme of Observation Decks and Viewpoints, and was all of a 1.8-mile walk to the south: the
Portland Aerial Tram.
I have had this on my list of things to do in Portland since before covid—although, before covid, the last time I had been to Portland was 2014. By the time I returned in 2021, it had been seven years. And I was dying to ride the Porltand Aerial Tram even then—but, alas, in June of 2021, the tram was still closed to the public, open for use only for staff and students at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), which is what the upper level of the tram connects to, from the Lower Terminal between the freeway and the Willamette River directly to the west. In fact, I didn't even return to working at the office until the end of that very month—at the time of that trip, mask-wearing generally was still far more common than it is now, and I was actually still working from home.
I returned to Portland barely more than a year later, and I can't even remember whether I had considered making the Portland Aerial Tram part of my itinerary or my train-themed Birth Week in 2022. No, wait!
There it is, in my blog post for that day in 2022—even that year,
still the tram was not open to the general public. Otherwise I definitely would have gone then. So, instead, I took a MAX Light Rail train (another train for that year's theme!) plus a transfer bus out to The Grotto, the beautiful sanctuary Ivan had visited not long before and the photos he shared on Facebook made me want to go check it out. Anyway, the tram finally reopened to the regular public that same year, 2022, on May 9, actually—all of
four days after my day trip down there. Annoying! Well, here we are three years later, and I have
finally gone back to Portland again and ridden the thing, which has actually been open since 2006! I sure wish I had known about it earlier. But, it's only in the past six years or so that I have started looking up the best views of any city I visit. I'm getting smarter about this shit!
Shobhit and I kind of bided our time, and we walked over to the riverfront first, and then walked most of the way south to the Aerial Tram alongside the river. Soon enough we could see
the tower that supports the cables and which the trams rise quickly up to their eastern, lower end.
Presuming you have a working understanding of my love of skyscrapers and city skylines, it should come as no surprise to you that I found the Portland Aerial Tram to be
absolutely spectacular. I knew I would enjoy this, but the view truly gave me a genuine thrill, as we ascended and glided in the air over the freeway, with the northward view of the Portland skyline. And even though Portland still has building height restrictions that keeps its skyline quite modest for a city its size—the tallest building remains Wells Fargo Center, built in 1972 at 40 floors and a height of 546 feet; counting the Space Needle, Seattle now has eleven buildings taller than that. Still Portland has added two buildings taller than 500 feet in the past decade, and it has a lot of surrounding natural beauty, particularly mountains and volcanic peaks, that augment the beauty of its urban landscape.
The OHSU end, up on the hill, includes an observation deck—which I did not include on its own in my list of "Observation Decks and Viewpoints," mostly because it is so far overshadowed by the view from the Aerial Tram itself. Still, that observation platform has its own spectacular views of both
Mt. Hood and
Mt. St. Helens, the latter of which I had not remembered could be seen so prominently from Portland. I only ever think of Mt. Hood as the signature mountain looming over the city, in similar fashion to Mt. Rainier as seen from Seattle, or many other places around the Puget Sound.
We went inside OHSU to explore a bit, and Shobhit said he wanted to look for "a canteen." I was rather confused at first, as that's not typically what a place to eat would be called, particularly in a medical center. Anyway, we found a directory, and there was a surprisingly large number of eating establishments in the gigantic, multi-building but interconnected complex. We checked out just about all of them before we finally got to "
Café on Third," the one place with the most options and which is apparently open 24 hours a day. It's still cafeteria style, but we ordered two dishes to share: a truffle macaroni & cheese with a vegetable side, and a bowl of chana masala with a pretty basic version of naan. The mac & cheese was a bit blander than it looked, but the chana masala was actually surprisingly tasty. And the two dishes together cost only $11. Shobhit joked that we should have planned to meet Evan there for dinner later.
We made our way back to the Aerial Tram, where you scan the QR code for the tickets that are good for a round trip for $8.50 each, and of course I took a bunch more photos on the ride back. I got the call from The Paramount Hotel at 2:09 that our room was ready, and we were waiting on the platform for the return tram when that happened. We walked back to the hotel, routing through the city rather than the riverfront this time, and reached the hotel at about 3:05.
In the meantime, we killed a bit of time, after checking in at the hotel and resting for a while, by heading over to check out the Multnomah County Central Library, which is all of a block and a half from the hotel. Shobhit mentioned it when we were first driving into the city, and I was like: Why hadn't I thought about this already? I now have a thing for checking out the central library in major cities (and sometimes even smaller ones, like
Mount Vernon), so of course I'd want to check out the Central Library in Portland!
Honestly. I tend to be far more interested if they are large buildings made within the past few decades with modern architecture, notable design (as in the Seattle Central Library) a plus. Much of the Central Library in Portland is still pretty, but it's a much older building, constructed in 1913. It's a bit simpler, and not very tall, and unlike the Central Libraries in Seattle, Toronto or Phoenix, it has neither high vaulted ceilings or expansive views. This library has four floors. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, though, which would explain why it hasn't been replaced with a more modern building like in other cities (such as Seattle).
We headed over there at about a quarter till 5:00, and I spent about fifteen minutes looking around. I got 18 photos out of it, so that's enough for
a dedicated photo album, I guess.
We did make ourselves cocktails to go, which we carried in open paper cups, and Shobhit just walked right into the library with that cup in hand. I did follow, my own cup in hand, but it made me very nervous. Shobhit even spoke briefly with someone at an Information Desk, and I really expected someone to tell him he could not bring a drink in there. Either they didn't notice it or they just ignored him for some reason. Both our cups had juice in them as mixers, and I was less concerned about the alcohol content than if we had bumped against something or tripped and splattered juice on library books. That didn't happen, of course.
Oh: I should mention, my cocktail was actually transferred a jar in which it was
originally served to me, at
Swine Moonshine + Whiskey, the bar off the lobby at the hotel. We were told at the front desk that we got a $10 credit for use at either that bar or the restaurant on the other side of the lobby, and you know us, we weren't about to turn down any deals. We had to charge the drink to the room to make it work, and after adding the tip, this $9.50 cocktail came to $11.50, which meant the whopping balance of $1.50 was added to my room charge when we checked out. Anyway, I was kind of surprised when the bartender said it was fine for us to take the drink up to our room, so that's what we did—Shobhit made his own cocktail out of the mango juice and vodka we had brought from home, and we poured my "Strawberry Fields" (strawberry moonshine, lemon, mint) into the aforementioned paper cup. That was what I took into the library.
By about a quarter after 5:00, we had walked over to the world-famous Powell's Books. I find myself unusually delighted by this shot: Shobhit is, as always, rushing across the street rather than waiting. I didn't even realize I had gotten this shot mid-run, with the yellow light visible when we're not yet even halfway across the street.
We only spent a few minutes there. People love, love,
love that bookstore—touted as the largest in the world—but I just kept thinking about how, even though I do also love reading, I just get all my books through my local library. I do want bookstores to persist, and to say they are a dying breed is a grand understatement, but keeping libraries and their absolutely vital civic functions going is far more important to me.
I did go to see what kind of copies of my favorite novel, Aldous Huxley's
Brave New World, they had. I am always curious if a bookstore has early editions. Powell's did not, although they had a bunch of copies of it otherwise, including the edition I got in the nineties and have now read five times.
During this time walking around downtown Portland, we also stopped in at the flagship
UnderU4men store. I actually bought a pair of underwear there in 2021, but I have more underwear than I need right now. We did check out their clearance racks, but in the end only bought a couple boxes of "intimate hair removal cream." We have one already that Shohit bought at the much smaller UnderU4men store in Seattle—which we learned yesterday is owned separately as a franchise location—but the advantage here was Oregon's lack of sales tax.
Shobhit keeps wanting me to also get body hair removal, but that just sounds like a real pain in the ass (I mean that figuratively) that I just don't want to have to deal with and which I do not think would be worth the effort. Shobhit would, but of course he's not the one that would have to go to the effort.
For dinner, Shobhit and I killed two birds with one stone: we went to
Elephants Delicatessen, which had been recommended to me because of "excellent homemade ding dongs." I wish I could remember who told me that; I texted the above photo to Scott, thinking it was him, but apparently it wasn't. I can tell you, though, the ding dong was indeed fucking amazing: perfectly moist chocolate cake, with a
lot of cream filling in the center—the skimping of that cream always being my complaint about the homemade ding dongs at Gourmondo's by my office here in Seattle. Anyway the other thing is that Evan also met up with us.
I assumed Evan would be there with their spouse, who will now go unnamed, and I was surprised to find them alone. I asked where he was, and Evan just replied, "He's gone." Even provided a lot more detail there over the course of the evening, but it's not my story so I won't get into it here.
I
will say this: I had not seen Evan since Shobhit and I had dinner with them during our June 2021 visit to Portland. Then, I returned to Portland for that day trip in early May 2022, and completely spaced the idea of looking Evan up. I even messaged them about a week later on Facebook:
I don't know why I had such a brain fart that I didn't think to mention to you I would be in Portland last Thursday, now I'm kicking myself. I added a few things about the plan having been made last minute and they were probably working anyway. Evan replied only a few hours later,
Oh that's crazy.
Even messaged me one more thing several months later, in September 2022. As of last week, that was the last time I had heard from them. In fact, Shobhit was the one who suggested I see if they would be available to meet up this time around—I was like: oh, right. It had been so long since we had any contact, I looked up Evan's number in my text app. There was only one text in the history, a single link to a tweet I texted to them in December 2019. I decided to take the chance anyway, and texted the number to ask if this was still Evan's number and that this was Matthew. That was Wednesday last week, and Evan finally texted back on Saturday—I learned later, after they had found the phone that had been lost
or a month, and they just found it again on Friday—two days after I texted. How's that for timing? Evan later commented on how surprised they were to hear from me: "Oh, it's Matthew!" So then, after a few more text exchanges over the next few days (with Evan's responses being short and general enough that I actually wondered if maybe the number was not with some kind of AI scam—I thought to myself: if "Evan" suddenly asks for money in one way or another, I'm blocking this number!), we finally settled on Tuesday that we would meet Wednesday for dinner at Elephants Delicatessen, at 7:00.
While we were all at the table in the deli or dinner, how Evan and I first met came up. "We met through Laney," Evan said. Evan had sung with Laney in the Seattle Women's Chorus, and Laney invited them to join for some movie watches in the Braeburn Condos theater with us. Soon enough, Evan and I were doing things independent of Laney, going to a lot of movies together. It was Evan, in fact, who got me to start going to the Dina Martina Christmas Show nearly every year—I actually went with them every December between 2013 and 2018. I can't remember why we all skipped the show in 2019, but then there was no in-person show in 2020, and by then Evan had moved to Portland anyway; they've lived there for five years now.
In fact, I looked up how many years Evan ever participated in my Birth Week: before yesterday, they had participated
four different years 2012 (so I've known them at least since then); 2013; 2014; and 2016. I mentioned to Evan last night that 2016 was the last time they participated in my Birth Week. "That's so long ago!" they said. "I saw you more recently than that, of course," I clarified. In fact, I just looked up the most recent photo I took of Evan before they moved to Portland—it was at the Live Aloha Hawaiian Cultural Festival at Seattle Center in September 2019. If that was not the last time I saw them before covid, it would have to have been very close to it. No, wait! I just checked
my Social Review—proving its usefulness once again!—and the last time I saw Evan, both before covid and before they moved to Portland, was January 2020, during a movie watch of
Batman Returns and
The Dark Knight. Laney, Jessica and someone named Sam were also there.
After that, the next time I saw them was June 13, 2021—a year and a half later. Now it's another four years later. I think there's a number of reasons we fell out of touch in that time, not least of which was Evan getting locked out of their socials and having to reopen new accounts. They didn't bother refriending more than a couple of people, but after last night, we are now reconnected on both Facebook and Instagram. Even even talked about thinking about coming back to Seattle for an overnight visit sometime, and Shobhit immediately mentioned we have a spare room they can stay in. This seemed to pique Evan's own interest in the idea, as it obviously offers a savings compared to finding a hotel. Even said they miss browsing Pike Place Market, and both Shobhit and I raved about the massive transformation of the Seattle Waterfront since 2020. I love this idea. Evan was thinking about doing this around their birthday, which I had totally forgotten is on August 5—the same birthday as my dad. (Dad will turn 70 this year, but there does not seem to be any plan for a major party or anything that I would need to reserve the date for.)
As if to underscore how much has changed since last seeing Evan in 2021, I was a bit taken aback when we arrived at Elephants Delicatessen after walking the mile or so there from the hotel, and Evan was standing in the parking lot. I wasn't even sure it was them at first—they were wearing bright pink,
from head to toe, with a punk-style haircut much wilder than I had ever seen on them. The cat-eye glasses and the spiderweb purse would have been par for the course for Evan even a decade ago, but the pink was rather . . . striking. Later over dinner Evan even said, "I'm in my pink era!" I had assumed the top and the pants had been purchased as an outfit, but nope: they got them separately, both at thrift stores. They sure can mix and match and accessorize well, though. Apparently they've bought a lot of pink stuff lately, which is a definite shift. When Even lived in Seattle, they wore mostly darker tones, which seemed more fitting with the extensive interest in horror that seems to go on unabated even now.
I'm not sure if I used she/her pronouns to refer to Evan just beforehand—I really can't remember—but there was a moment over dinner when Evan said, "I am officially nonbinary now." And honestly, after all the years I have known Evan, this
really tracks. They have a record of really undefinable sexuality as well as gender expression. In any case, this is why I have been using they/them to refer to them throughout this post, and I also feel like this is a good thing, if I have a friend I spend time with with any frequency where I am forced to think about using nonbinary pronouns. In practice, I must say there remains some lack of clarity with specifically "they/them." because it can be unclear whether I am referring just to Evan, or in the cast of past time with them, to Even and their former spouse.
I guess it's just a matter of practice, and using names more often when clarity is needed. Evan spoke a lot about a friend they made at work who is nonbinary, with the name Jayden if I remember right. This friend is clearly also nonbinary, and Evan consistently referred to them with comfort and ease and I was always able to understand. Granted, there was never any context that suggested there
could be reference to Jayden and another person, which is distinct from how I might be referring to Evan now.
Evan has also lost a noticeable amount of weight, so that was another thing that was strikingly different: the bold pink of the outfit; the green hair and partially shaved head; the lost weight. Even looks like a totally different person, at least at first glance. They mentioned more than once that they are 46 now, and after years of looking many years younger, Even is starting to look closer to their age. Although we saw a before & after pair of photos on their Instagram account from when the haircut happened last summer, and they still looked really young in the before photo, so I think the style of the haircut may also have to do with it.
Evan still acts very much like Evan, though, chatty and sort of fidgety in a way that tracks with what they referred to themselves as probable (but undiagnosed) autism. Evan has a tendency to sway back and forth a lot, which I think may be a form of
stimming. Ivan has many different but similar forms of stimming as well, so it's something I'm fairly used to. I certainly don't judge it, and consciously let it occur with neutrality.
Side note on Elephants Delicatessen: we did not realize the way the store is set up—it's not a conventional restaurant, and is very much a deli. There are different stations from which you order, then you gather all your stuff and take it, cafeteria style, to the register to pay. We also discovered that, late in the date, many of the prepared items in cases are cut to half off, which made it even more convenient that we met there at 7:00, only an hour before they closed. The ding dong has a regular price of $12 but we got it for $6! So did Evan: they ordered one after I told them I had been recommended this place specifically for that item.
Shobhit also ordered two cheese bread sticks and a baguette when he discovered they were half off as well. We ordered the veggie quesadilla and a side of garlic fries for an entree to share. I thought that was pretty good, but as I mentioned, that ding dong was fucking amazing—so much so that I am keeping it on my list of stops for our next trip to Portland, whenever that may be. I kind of hope sooner than another three years from now, but we'll see. I'd kind of like to get back to Vancouver, B.C. again first, a city I am far more fond of.
We were chatting past closing time, and even though one of the employees waved off the concern and said, "I'm going to be here a while," it seemed to make Shobhit nervous. He suggested we go back to the hotel to continue our discussion and we could continue catching up. That, you see, would be why Evan was later walking through the Paramount Hotel lobby and commenting on how fancy it is.
Even drove us back to the hotel in their car, making it easier to get our leftovers back as well—the pizza slices were also half off, and Shobhit added two slices of cheese pizza to our order. When we left, there was still one slice left, which we ate while we were all catching up in the hotel room. We later discovered that both yesterday and today were days off for Evan, so they hung out until around 10:00. It actually got to a point where I kind of wondered if there were some non-awkward way I could suggest we walk them back to their car. Soon enough they indicated they'd get going, and then I had the perfect moment to offer walking them out. They clearly appreciated the offer, too: they don't often come into downtown, and might not even remember how to get back to the car, even though it was only a couple of blocks away. I had also pinned the location on my phone.
I had Shobhit
get one last photo of Evan by their car before we parted ways, and it turned out quite lovely. I do hope we can make their visit to Seattle this summer work.
Shobhit thought we should go to a club, and I kind of agreed, even though it was only Wednesday and not the greatest night for it. We settled on
Silverado, basically a gay stripper bar, and we were there about ten till 11:00.
We were there less than an hour, and I'll say the experience was . . . mixed. Mixed in the sense that, the Moscow Mule Shobhit bought for me at the bar downstairs—where the male strippers perform—was delicious and with a heavy pour; but otherwise the scene kind of just made me sad.
Shobhit and I were the only identifiably middle-aged people among the clientele, and the total had to have numbered less than ten. The others were downright geriatric, I'm not kidding. I don't mean to judge, but it was striking: the only guys in their twenties were the dancers, and aside from Shobhit and me, the other patrons were old enough to be their grandfathers. The dancers were transparently hustling for tips, probably just trying to pay their rent, and they were performing for lonely old men. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions there, but these guys were all there by themselves, after all. Shobhit and I were the only couple in there.
I saw at least three older guys at other chairs or small tables, who would happily let one of the young dancers chat them up, their hands caressing their young thighs or some other part of their body. A guy on an intercom announced that a private lap dance was $25, and we saw guys go into a back room with one of the young dancers a couple of times.
Shobhit had forgotten that this was a cash-only establishment, and I never have cash. He had only a few $1 bills, which he used up on the first couple of dancers that gave us attention. The first one beckoned us both over to chairs by the rectangular wooden bar that wraps around the center stage with a stripper pole in the middle of it. Remember, in Oregon it's legal for strippers to get totally naked, and these guys do, though often just by pulling their briefs down around their thighs. At one point Shobhit just threw caution to the wind and stuck his face right into our first dancer's ass crack. The guy gracefully moved away and then playfully wagged a finger at him. Shobhit reacted by laughing in a sort of "I'm so naughty" manner, and indeed a moment later the dancer learned into my year and said, "He's naughty!" I only touched the guy's body after he grabbed my hands and placed them on his torso. Then I got somewhat handsy, having been given clear permission, but nothing close to what Shobhit pulled.
The second dancer to come up to us was super hot, but that seemed to be what he thought he could coast on. Others did genuinely impressive work up and down the stripper pole, the kind of stuff that takes real strength and skill. This guy, wearing a pair of red boxer briefs, lounged on the bar in front of us, barely moved, and then just said, "Do you have any dollars?" Again, I'm sure they're all trying to make ends meet (or maybe not, maybe some are all set and they just like the attention and extra cash), but if you want tips, I'm sorry, but I think you should work for them. The first dancer who had come to us was slightly less hot, but with his dancing and movements he was far sexier.
All that said, again, the whole scene there late on a Wednesday night was more sad than anything. The place was dead, the dancers were making a pittance as a result, and we didn't even have as much cash on hand as we would have had we realized it was cash-only. God knows we weren't going to use an ATM there that would gouge us with transaction fees. As soon as I finished my one cocktail, we walked back home, just over half a mile around midnight, in a city that apparently always sleeps. Again: I know it was just Wednesday. But, even Seattle has
some shit going on downtown mid-week, or certainly on Capitol Hill, which is adjacent to downtown, as were the just-as-dead neighborhoods adjacent to downtown Portland.
I keep thinking about how Evan themself once said to me, "Portland is like a sad Seattle." Portland has a lot of great stuff to offer and I even look forward to going back, but I've always thought that was a perfect way to characterize it. It's ironic Evan wound up moving there, but it was due both to circumstances where the grocery store they were working at in Seattle was closed but they could transfer to another store in the same company in Portland. Plus, Evan said, they had spent many years living in the Seattle area and was just tired of it. They wanted a change of scenery. I get that, even if I can't personally fathom wanting to move out of Seattle for any reason.
So that brings us, finally, to this morning. We were in Portland for basically one 24-hour stretch, but out of a total of roughly 18 waking hours, the first 13 of them were spent there yesterday.
I didn't even get to bed last night until about 1:00 a.m., after processing a ton of photos and uploading them to my Facebook account. I was awake before even 7 a.m. this morning, mostly because Shobhit struggled to figure out how to make the coffee maker work, and kept krinking shit—paper, plastic bags, I don't know what the fuck—for about ten minutes straight. Then he pulled open the curtains or some reason, blaring sunlight into the room. "Jesus Christ!" I shouted, flinging the covers off. He apologized and told me to continue sleeping, but I said, "It's impossible!"—which by that point it was. I later napped in the car on the drive home and that helped a bit.
I guess it also let us get a pretty early start. I got ready, which took a little over an hour. Shobhit found a breakfast place just a few blocks away called Daily Feast. I took the above shot there at 9:22 a.m. You can't see the sign in the building lobby to the right of and behind Shobhit because it's blurred, but it says MEDICAL DENTAL BUILDING, which we also have one of in Seattle. Probably lots of cities have one, come to think of it. Anyway we shared the veggie scramble and it was so delicious it really exceeded expectations. We spoke briefly to the manager who happened to come by our table, and when I mentioned how good the veggie scramble was, he said it's his favorite thing on the menu. I guess we chose well.
After that, we walked back to the hotel, up to our room, gathered our stuff, and checked out.
My initial plan, for a long time actually, was to drive to Windy Ridge Viewpoint on the east side of Mt. St. Helens on our way home—and that would be my Birth Week "viewpoint" for today. Shobhit looked it up and discovered a stretch of road that would have been the most obvious access is closed due to a mudslide. This had come up in conversation months ago actually, but I looked it up and thought it was on the access road that came to the visitor center on the west side of the mountain, which made me think we were good to go. This time, though, Shobhit found the specific name of a bridge that I looked up, and realized: shit. This isn't going to work.
Shobhit had a board meeting at 6:00 tonight that he needed to get back for, which further constrained the time. I realized that even if the access road had been open, we'd be too crunched or time to make this work. So: yesterday I finally chucked Mt. St. Helens out the window. Instead, I went with a suggestion from a web page I had found of "
best views of Portland," and I'm so glad I did! Being back in the car on the way out of town, we drove there after heading out this morning, which also worked out well because afterward we wound up on I-205 which made for easy access from that side of the Willamette River before crossing the Columbia into Washington State, where the Costco Shobhit wanted to stop at for gas was on that side of Vancouver, Washington anyway.
So, the stop we made on our way through and out of town:
Mount Tabor Park. And guess what? Not only are there truly spectacular, panoramic views of the city from there, but I had no idea it's literally on top of a volcano—the only one inside the city limits of a major city
in the contiguous United States.
I found the park overall to be both fascinating and beautiful. We only spent about half an hour there today, stopping only at the reservoir with the city view and then at the Visitors Center, and also driving through. There's a
stunning view of Mt. Hood from the other side. I immediately decided to keep it on the list of places to spend more time at the next time we go to Portland, when we can explore the park on foot, and bring a picnic. (I plan to make the theme of Birth Week 2027 "great picnic spots," perhaps I should return then?) Given how dead downtown Portland is, we even talked about staying in a different neighborhood next time, maybe even somewhere east of the Willamette River, which might prove to be a bit cheaper anyway.
In any case, I was perfectly happy with that as an alternative to sucking up the entire day with a detour to the east side of Mt. St. Helens—and hey, I just realized, I even went to an alternative volcano! Also, this way, even after stopping to grocery shop at DK Market in Renton before driving the rest of the way home, we were home just after 3:00.
I made chai, and processed today's much smaller number of photos (26 today vs. 129 yesterday). Then I started this massive blog post covering not one but two days of my Birth Week, and here I am, at 9:30 p.m., ready to get some rest, and wake up to the next day!
[posted 9:34pm]
