We went out to Portland again this year! We had such a fun time in 2023 that we wanted to repeat the magic; it was fabulous, we found soooooo much to do.
We did a lot:
- We toured a nuclear reactor at Reed College!
- We hiked!
- We visited the ocean!
- We hiked through a lava tube!
- We ate a ton of good food!
- We ate an immense amount of fresh fruit from stores, stands, and, farms!
- We went to multiple festivals including chalk art!
- We saw a circus with no animals, just incredible human talent!
- We saw a forest fire including tanker plans dropping Columbia river water on the fire!
- We finally visited Mt. Hood!
There is so much to do in Portland it’s unreal. I feel like we could spend a few years out there doing new things every day. There aren’t a lot of places in the US that have the ocean, wonderful hiking, city stuff, wonderful restaurants, children’s activities, and, agriculture / orchards near a major metro area.
I spent a little more time trying to find the rare things to do and wrangled a trip to see the Reed College nuclear reactor. It was AWESOME. The director gave us a personalized tour and it was an incredible experience seeing everything first hand. The biggest surprise was that the reactor had a whole lot of stuff that looked original so it was like stepping back into the 1960s/1970s. Super cool experience.
We visited when Rainier cherries, peaches, and, other fruit was in season. We found out the peach season in the area is about three to four months long due to all the different varieties grown. We probably ate our weight in fruit and it was absolutely amazing. We hiked through a lava tube, which was a very fun experience, and stopped by a random fruit stand on the way back only to find deer eating fruit right next to the stand. The deer had impeccable taste – the fruit was amazing!
The Portland area is known for food. We ended up finding and visiting the very first Pronto Pup restaurant, it was good but I was told “it’s not the same as the pronto pups at the state fair”, and, we had an incredible amount of delicious meals. We even visited the Frying Scotsman, a place we visited the very first time we went to Portland 15 or so years ago. The same guy is running the food cart and the fish and chips are just as delicious as they were 15 years ago. It’s such a neat experience to say in downtown Portland and be within walking distance to multiple food truck corrals. The variety of foods offered was insane, I’m not sure it’s possible to go to one city block to get chicken katsu, tamales, and, something like shwarma anywhere else in the country.
The other activities / sights were just so much fun. It was wonderful to see a circus where no animals were used. I’ve seen a lot of things over the years but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that level of human talent all in one place. The incredible skill and strength needed to perform all the tricks was nothing short of amazing. The outdoors were wonderful, it was fantastic to smell the ocean, the forests, and, the mountains. Going up to Mt. Hood ended up being fairly interesting and it was fun to throw snowballs at each other in the middle of summer.
We had a chance to safely see a forest fire and watched two tanker planes make loops between picking up water in the Columbia River and dumping water on the fire. It was a lot of fun to watch the forest fire and watch the tanker planes. Unfortunately, the forest fire was bad for those who lived near / in the fire, but for us visitors, it was pretty cool.
One of the bigger surprises was our lodging: we stayed at a hotel in the Pearl District and it went perfectly. Portland still doesn’t have the best reputation right now and some groups report roaming bands of drugged out zombie people creating mayhem wherever they go all day long in the Portland area. We found peacefulness and quietness in a typical downtown setting. We were surprised at what happened at night – we stayed near a boulevard where the roads were separated by a nice green space. Toward the evenings homeless people would set up places to sleep in the green spaces and rest for the night. This was extremely similar to our experiences in Cape Town, South Africa about a decade ago. At the time, I found the juxtaposition between our extremely comfortable lodging and people sleeping in a grassy field quite jarring and, ten years later, it’s still quite jarring.
We found most things weren’t too crowded. Hiking in Beacon Rock State Park on their most popular trail wasn’t too busy, going to the sidewalk chalk art show in Hillsboro wasn’t too busy even though it was a weekend, we were pretty much the only people at Bonneville Dam, and, even the random places we stopped for fruit were not busy. I went up to Pittock Mansion one morning for sunrise and was warned there were would be a bunch of people there with me. After a very peaceful walk to the mansion I found myself entirely alone for the entire time. The only place that really seemed packed to the gills was Tillamook Creamery in Tillamook. People were lined up to visit that place before it opened for some reason.
Overall, it was a 10/10 experience. I love Portland and I’d love to go back.
Enjoy the photos!
Chris W.
