Portland And/Or Bust

[Got back night before last from a three-night car trip to Portland. Max and I spent two nights in the Rose City, then drove down to Eureka in the northern California redwood belt, and spent a night there. We drove back to San Francisco on Tuesday, taking the opportunity to inspect the trees along the Avenue of the Giants.]

[That's what I did. Max will have pics posted at some point, as you may have noticed this isn't a photo blog. (I'm sure if it's much of a blog at all anymore, to be honest.) Max may also have a more complete, prose-based summary. Meanwhile, I think it's time for a list of impressions:]

[1. I don't mind long drives, and I don't mind doing all the driving, as I did on this trip. I don't like driving at night, however, and all three long stretches ended up involving doing that night. It wasn't that bad.]

[2. In the morning, before the dust and heat rise up, even the Sacramento Valley has plenty of scenic beauty.]

[3. Olives rule. So do cute, friendly, rural-based cashiers who can't move to San Francisco because they'd "be drunk all the time." Can't say he was wrong.]

[4. We all need to move to Dunsmuir and open cool small businesses this minute. Actually, we drove thru at least a half-dozen mountain towns in both California and Oregon that fed that particular fantasy. Will I ever do it, and would I even enjoy it? Who knows?]

[5. There's an awful lot of southern Oregon. Most of it is gorgeous, but there's just a lot of it. (Oh, by the way...I like Oregon, as a state. It seems to have the right proportion of right-thinking people to good-looking terrain. It is a little too white for my taste.)]

[6. The heavy drops challenging the dull wiper blades of our trusty Ford Focus as we finally got into PDX didn't exactly do anything to enhance my preconceived notion of the area's weather. Luckily, except for a few drops on Sunday that didn't call for an umbrella, we had gorgeous skies the rest of the trip.]

[5. Fall colors! As a lifelong Californian, I tend to shrug at the endless pining for fall colors by East Coast transplants. But...my gosh, those trees up and down I-5 and in Portland were on fire, and not in the bad, southern California kind of way. Especially in the South Park Blocks...it's kind of like another planet.]

[6. What's Portland like? Well, it's pretty great. The Angry Young Man got back from a trip there last weekend (that's where he went to law school), and his enthusiasm after the visit was a little much. Upon my own inspection, though, I have to say I get it now. Portland has the best aspects of the inner Bay Area: scenery, though not as spectacular as here; fine, human-scale old neighborhoods mostly within walking distance of each other; all the arty stuff that, even if one doesn't partake very often, is nice to know is there; great restaurants and some good bars; adequate transit (yes...compared to much of the U.S., even S.F.'s public transit is pretty good, even if it took me an hour and twenty minutes to get to work today on %*&^!@#%$ Muni!); and an educated, liberal, laid-back citizenry. Portland, though, is smaller - about the size and level of sophistication that makes me feel at home in a city, I realize. And it's cleaner and less expensive than San Francisco, by a huge margin.]

[Drawbacks? I didn't see too many on this visit. I know what the weather's like, and as I get older, sky-based gloom does affect my mood more and more, while intense sunshine like S.F. has been getting this week always gives me a natural lift. For me, being that far from my family is something to which I'd have to give serious thought. I might miss some of the racial/ethnic diversity here. And apparently it's tough to get a job (hence the cheapness), and we all know how much I love job-hunting.]

[I don't know. As I transferred twice on Muni this morning and was still late to work, amid all the noise and filth and impatience and rudeness and stress of just getting across San Francisco, I finally began to form the thought: maybe I've had enough of this city. And if I have, what are my options?]

[7. Highlights from this tourist's point of view:

[a. Dinners at Pok Pok and Clyde Common, as good as or better than anything I've had of those types of food in San Fran.]

[b. The Classical Chinese Garden. Phenomenal, and probably worth multiple visits thruout the year.]

[c. Again, the South Park Blocks. You think the adjacent Portland State needs someone to teach legal theory to undergraduates?]

[d. Breakfast at Jam in the Hawthorne District. Best corned beef hash in the universe, a cute cook, and all of one's favorite 80s classix on the iPod. What more could one want?]

[e. Not so high-lights: the gay scene seems kind of lackluster (but since when has luster been a priority for me?); Fort Vancouver over on the Washington side of the Columbia was a bit disappointing, but what're gonna do when your historical site is all reconstruction?; and I felt a totally idiosyncratic irritation with the sustainable-green rhetoric plastered on every building, plaque and menu, especially in the Pearl District.]

[Look. My great-grandfather was a somewhat prominent naturalist author. I grew up in northern California in the 70s, and my parents were very into conservation, as was the version of the Boy Scouts to which I belonged: I get it. I believe in it, and to an extent, I live it. I just don't need it drummed into my head in that mellow/earnest, Marin-esque, yuppie way that seems to be so prevalent. I'm sure it's me, I know, but walking thru the Pearl, I yearned perversely to come across a Denny's or an auto detailers or something, just for variety. Better this than Houston or Phoenix, of course, but...oh, I'll just shut up.]

[8. The drive south was more of the same. Lots of damn beautiful, damn abundant southern Oregon. We cut across to the coast on U.S. Highway 199, a road I'd had a hankering to drive for years. It's the northernmost extension of the Redwood Highway, which begins at the north anchorage of the Golden Gate Bridge, so I've now driven the whole thing. Unfortunately, because we didn't get out of Portland until 2 P.M., I didn't get to see the scenery. Next time.]

[7. Some night, you may find yourself eating a grilled chicken sandwich, onion rings and drinking an orange juice under the harsh lights of the Burger King in Eureka at 10 P.M. because your hotel desk clerk has told you that's all there is at that hour even though you'd kill for a burrito. Take it from me: the non-suicidal-but-still-pretty-intensely-dark thoughts are normal, and will pass.]

[8. They'll pass in part because, in daylight the following morning, Eureka is quite pleasant. It's that rare thing, a small city: these days, most North Americans live in either a few big, older cities that look like New York, Chicago, Boston, or San Francisco; overgrown suburbs like Los Angeles; or small towns that are either cutesy-twee like Sonoma or trashy like...well, I won't hurt anyone's feelings with that judgment. Eureka's not any of those: it's the largest town in a fairly large, sparsely populated region, and shows it, even though it's got fewer than thirty thousand people living in the city limits. Max and I found decent seafood (but not the Dungeness crab we craved), pleasant walking, and killer mixed-nut-brittle for the road. Eureka: not as bad as you imagine! (But someone needs to open a late-night diner or taqueria.)]

[9. I finally did the redwoods right. Even though my family and the Scouts camped a lot in the redwoods, and I developed what little spiritual consciousness I have there, I'd never really done the hard-core, Reagan-tried-to-cut-'em-down-in-the-60s, look!-there's-an-elk Redwoods Drive before. Adjectives aren't sufficient. (No, we didn't really see an elk, but we could have!) Max and I got out at a promising-looking grove and he took lots of photos. Also: I had no idea Bigfoot was such a cottage industry up there.]

[The drive south thru the familiar coutryside-and-suburbs of southern Mendocino, Sonoma, and Marin counties was uneventful, although Max and I were disappointed to learn (via Max's net-surfing on his cell along about Willits) about the end of a certain favorite blog. I've been thru this before with other daily (read: obsessive) reads, but M. seemed quite nonplussed. Eh; I bet Eric will be back. Anyway, we got back into the city by 8:30, and I got my chile verde burrito on Haight Street.]

[That's all. Keep checking Max's blog for pics, which I'm sure he'll post one day.]

Previously Next