Sunday, July 9th, 2023

Starting mileage: 7429, Distance travelled: 369

Miles walked: 5.75

We woke up in the Comfort Inn to hot showers and a surprisingly yummy free buffet breakfast, including Belgian waffle-making for the kids. The room was decent and this was much better than our last same-day roadside hotel choice. We drove into Portland, over the Columbia River.

After parking, our first stop was Powell’s City of Books, the world’s largest independent bookstore. Everyone found something (or several somethings) to buy. We wandered Dow to the Willamette riverside park and found the Hamilton building.

Next we decided to try one of the quirky food offerings the city is known for and headed to Voodoo Donuts. We waited in a long line but they were very organized and it moved quickly. There were so many choices of plate-sized donuts but we decided on the Old Dirty Bastard, Memphis Mafia, Passion fruit cheesecake, Raised glazed, and Voodoo doll.

Next we headed to Pioneer, which frequently has public performances but was quiet when we visited. It’s still a lovely square.

We stopped at the Columbia store which we thought might be the flagship store because it was founded in Portland, but alas, it was just a regular store. David was finally able to score a new long sleeve shirt. We stopped at a Japanese import store, Muji, and got a few cool things including some coffee tea bags which has made AM coffee-making easier. Lunch was a well-reviewed Thai restaurant that started as a food truck that specializes in chicken and rice. David loved the sauce so much that he bought a jar to bring home. We hopped on the streetcar up to the Pearl District to get well-reviewed Salt & Straw ice cream in interesting, foo foo flavors like olive oil and lavender. Susan tried the Strawberry balsamic and black pepper, while Brady and Laura stuck to the more conservative Salted, Malted Cookie Dough and Chocolate Gooey Brownie and Double Fold Vanilla. It lived up to its reputation. We strolled the Pearl District and checked out the fun shops and did some people watching. One person even was walking a pet pig!

Our last stop in the city was the Breakside Brewery, where Brady and Laura ordered the largest pretzel we’ve ever seen. Laura also got to have her first Italian Soda.

We drove out of the city discussing the large homeless population we had seen throughout much of our day, including the progressive approach to managing it. We asked the children to consider the challenges faced with addiction and mental illness that we witnessed, and connected it to our own addiction to caffeine and Dad’s prior tobacco use.

We had a lovely, reasonably short drive from Portland to our campground. We saw our first covered bridge outside of New England.

We stayed in one of the best RV parks we’ve been in so far, Casey’s Riverside RV Resort. It was very well maintained, had a beautiful riverside setting, and awesome showers. After dinner, we started to walk around the campground along the wind river. It was beautiful, but as soon as we made it a few feet to the recreation pavilion the kids abandoned us to play ping-pong so David and Susan did the remainder of the loop by themselves.