Oregon Trip: Day 1
June 10, 2007:
My first day in Oregon was a full one. After getting in very late last night, I slept in until 6:30am or so (8:30am Carey Standard Time). I heard birds outside, so I quickly threw some warm clothes on and grabbed my binoculars and field guide. It was great to see so many western birds again. From my aunt and uncle's backyard, I picked up 4 life birds: Red-breasted Nuthatch, Black-capped Chickadee, Violet-green Swallow, and a Western Wood-Pewee. It was real fun to have common birds be new to me again!
After breakfast we set out towards Portland. We made a stop at Beaverton to visit my grandparents. They live in a great apartment with high ceilings in a retirement community. Gram gave us the grand tour which I videotaped with my new camera. She also joined our entourage and we went up to Portland.
Downtown Portland was very busy for a Sunday due to the Portland Rose Festival. We were going to for the weekend outdoor market. Pam and I tried this thing called an Elephant's Ear, which was a large flat pastry covered in cinnamon and sugar. It was quite excellent. We also found a vendor that was selling catnip logs! We had been looking everywhere for these things and couldn't find them. We bought two, one for us and one for my in-laws. We walked down to the river but the view was blocked by large naval ships that come in for the Festival. But as we were walking back, three Western Gulls flew overhead, my 5th life bird of the trip. 15 more to go to reach the 300 milestone.
After that, we took a train ("The Max") to a little commons area at Broadway at Morrison that had beautiful floral displays with college kids playing hackey sack. Then we walked to a 41-foot bank building that had a restaurant with happy hour overlooking the city. The view was spectacular, but the place was very busy, no doubt due to the Rose Festival. We finished our downtown Portland tour by viewing Portlandia, a 36 foot high bronze statute. I had seen it before, but Pam hadn't.
We took Gram home and ate a small Italian restaurant in Tigard. Our waiter ended up going to school with the Irish kids and gave us a family and friends discount :)
We went back to my aunt and uncles and crashed. It was a long day. Tomorrow I'm going to hit a nature preserve near here and let Pam sleep in, then we're going to see if my grandmother wants to do a Waterfall tour of northern central Oregon (where I should be able to pick up 5 new counties, 3 in Oregon and two in Washington).
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