Keeping Portland Weird

Stop 2 on our journey was Portland. We were fortunate enough to stay with a friend of Jo's from primary school, who has lived in Portland for a number of years. Li-Zandre, her mom, brother and friend Will were kind enough to host us for three nights, and took us around one of the strangest and most compelling cities we've ever visited. In general, Portland appeared to be exceptionally quirky, exceptionally beautiful, and strangely insular. The slogan of "Keep Portland Weird" appeared to be shorthand for "Keep Portland spectacularly pretty but overly obsessed with its own weirdness, to the point of making the culture oddly inaccessible to visitors". (Disclaimer - our experience of Portland is the sum total of 3 days, and is as such no doubt skewed heavily by where we were and what we got up to). Nevertheless, both Jo and I would like to return to experience more of the picturesque outdoors and aggressively outdoorsy sensibilities of the locals.

Night of arrival: Oh my word. The first boerewors I have tasted in a year and a half. And rusks. And biltong. (Though I did have those six months ago). Tasted like home.

Day 1: Five waterfalls along a beautiful old highway, including the iconic Multnomah Falls and (Jo's favourite), Latourelle Falls. Each required a few minutes of walking into the forest to view, and we had a chance to drink in the beauty of the Portland milieu. After the waterfalls, we headed to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and explored a submarine and various exhibits that appealed strongly to the nerd in me (I say that as if there is another part of me- basically it appealed to the nerd in me, i.e. all of me). A visit to Voodoo Donuts was mandatory (the signature doughnut - or donut in the ever-economical parlance of this former colony - is a voodoo doll-shaped doughnut that one stabs in the chest with a pretzel stick to cause red jam to spill out of the tiny wound), and we advanced our risk of diabetes significantly in the ensuing deliciousness. The evening then saw dinner at Chevy's, a Mexican restaurant that somehow got the idea (via some scurrilous gossip from the ladies at the table) that my birthday is sooner than the actual 7 weeks or so away, so I received an honorary song and sombrero. Bizarre, but fun. And now I have a sombrero, which is pretty much living the dream.

Day 2: The morning was dedicated to the Rose Festival parades. Portland is known as the City of Roses, and the parade featured everything from local politicians to rodeo queens and visitors from Taiwan. I'm pretty sure that if you attend five small town parades and get your parade card punched at each, you automatically get a green card. It doesn't get more American than announcers naming each rodeo queen and her princesses while a float of bears and other fauna (made of rose petals) trundles by. After the parade we took a drive to Mt Hood to see the year-round snowcap and drink absurdly sweet hot chocolate in the Timberline Lodge, which served as the basis for the exterior shots of the Overlook in the Shining.

Early the next morning we hit the road toward our next stop - an off-the-grid A-frame near a town called Gasquet with Jane and Dan, some Airbnb hosts that offer "custom bodywork" and a "Sasquatch Healing Temple". That particular tale, and more besides, will follow.

CITY RECAP: PORTLAND

Highlights: Beautiful waterfalls (especially Latourelle), Voodoo Donuts, South African food, Timberline Lodge at Mt Hood
Lowlights: Combination of time and a few other things meant exceptional brewery and food scene was largely skipped
People: Unlike anywhere else, odd lack of diversity
Oddities: Lots of hiking boots in evidence. Almost too many. Suspicious.
Jono & Jo’s totally objective and no-way made-up rating scale: 7 grains of crunchy, healthy cinnamon granola out of 10
Reminds us of: Tokai, Braamfontein, Brooklyn.
Distance travelled: 630 miles


To do next time: Breweries, Pok Pok, other food, longer hiking