As soon as we settled in Portland, Scott had to leave for another work event in Houston. The kids and I decided to get to know Portland as much as we could. There are far too many adventures to detail them all here, so I’ll just catch the highlights (in no particular order).
1. We did (most of) a scavenger hunt downtown. I was surprised to learn that a national company hosts these adventures in cities across the USA. Using an app on my phone, we did a scavenger hunt throughout downtown that let us really see some of the cool things in the area that we might have otherwise missed. We will be doing these in all cities that it is offered when we visit going forward.
A scavenger hunt clue was on the statue.
2. A teenager set fire to some area east of Portland last year burning over 50,000 acres. The damage was extensive. (He was later fined $32 million dollars by a judge.) So much of the east side of Portland is still closed off due to the fire. We were still able to view Multnomah Falls albeit from the scenic view on the highway. It was perhaps even more beautiful than we expected. I only wish we could have hiked over near it.
3. The Columbia River runs from eastern Oregon through Portland. It is huge and also serves as the border between Oregon and Washington for at least a portion of the river’s course.
We drove over the river into Washington state for a couple of stops.
We drove out to Dalles to check out the Columbia River Gorge. The museum was “okay”. It didn’t really work out with our attempt at learning non-whitewashed history. An entire section of the museum was focused on the Lewis and Clark expedition (since they actually were in the area), but only mentioned “a young Indian woman” who was with them. The name of Sacagawea wasn’t even mentioned. Pretty poor. Thankfully we had studied her last year in our history homeschool class. The museum did offer some fun dress-up clothes though so that was fun for the kids.
Fun in the museum.
“More clothes!!!”
4. The Columbia River is a big salmon migration path. Or rather, it used to be. The development of the river has caused a huge decrease in salmon, so several salmon fisheries are set up along the river. We were lucky enough to get to stop in two different ones to learn about them. The entire process of them protecting the salmon is too complicated to layout in this blog, but if you are ever presented with the opportunity to learn about them, it is well worth your time. The highlight for us was probably seeing the salmon ladders. We also enjoyed speaking with one of the biologists who explained how they suck the baby fish (about an inch long) up tubes so that they can tag them for later identification.
A salmon ladder
5. Herman the Sturgeon was worth a trip outside of Portland! Sturgeon are gigantic fish that have remained largely unchanged over the last 200 million years. They don’t even have scales but rather thick skin and bony like armor. Herman is about 80 years old, over 11 feet long, and weighs in at around 500 pounds. He was unbelievably cool. I learned later that Herman could have easily died from the fires described above, but has also survived a kidnapping, and a stabbing when someone jumped into his water and attempted to kill him. Herman’s the Boss.
6. We drove one day over an hour outside of Portland to go hiking. We thought we found a great place and were all looking forward to seeing a ton of waterfalls. Sadly, an hour into the hike, we hit fire remnants from last year and had to turn around as the trail was closed. The fire was simply devastating to the area.
The views were beautiful but the hike was short.
A fun bridge we found on the walk.
7. Portland has a ton of little neighborhoods that are quaint and walkable. The weather made it even better. We learned however that a crew cab dually long bed truck with an agonizingly wide turning radius is not what the engineers were thinking of when they designed the various areas of Portland that are off of the interstate.
8. HYDRANGEAS EVERYWHERE!
9. The kids and I fell in love with Oregon. We even spent a day looking at some properties to see if it might be a place we could live. (Spoiler alert: We can.)
10. One of Scott’s old friends lives in Portland. When Scott got back from Houston, we met up with Keith and his girlfriend for some cocktails. We had a blast and learned even more about the coolness of the city. We were even treated to the naked bicyclists as they went by on the street.
