Road Trip Seattle to San Francisco - Day 5 – Car(s) to Portland, Pittock Mansion, City Fair & Music

[anji]

Road Trip Seattle to San Francisco - Day 5 – Car(s) to Portland, Pittock Mansion, City Fair & Concert

Very exciting day – the start of our ‘on the road’ journey! We found the breakfast room very busy today and ate at the tables in the lobby. We were joined by a lovely couple from Touscon – he was a DJ and admired Will’s Wilko Johnson t shirt. They had a good music chat.

The hotel called us a cab and we headed off to Alamo. We’d booked a standard SUV. All was smooth going and we were given a Jeep Cherokee which had done 23,000 miles. Will was happy as we’d never had one before. We drove all of 100 yards past the point of no return on the circular exit to the carpark when lots of lights came on, including the battery. We parked up and Will went back up to see the guy who gave us the car – this turned out to be the manager and he was wonderful.

He came to look and it turned out the electrics had gone – no a/c, horn etc! So he drove us one-handed back onto the street and back into the carpark. He offered us the most enormous Suburban which was just toooo big for the two of us, so we declined it. We finished up with a Nissan Rogue SUV which had just 155 miles on the clock – result! We thanked him and hit the road to Portland. We’d bought a USA satnav previously and I also had downloaded Googlemaps offline on my phone for each area – this was such a help too.

We wanted to get to Portland reasonably quickly as we had tickets for the Rozone Concert tonight. Unbeknown to me when I booked the trip it was also the Portland Rose Festival. This was a huge bonus and luckily I booked the hotel before the prices went through the roof! There’s a grand parade with decorated floats of flowers and this was from 10am – 2pm. We wanted to avoid the traffic as this attracts 450,000 people across the City and it also went right by our hotel, so decided to tick off a few Portland things on the way in.

We briefly stopped at Mount St Helen’s visitor centre and at a Burgerville restaurant just north of Vancouver (not the Canadian one!). We’d not been to this chain before but the burgers were excellent and we’d definitely visit again.

First Portland stop was Nick’s house from the TV series Grimm. We are huge fans and have watched from the start so I’d checked out locations for us to visit. Driving round the neighbourhoods I was struck by how different all the houses are to each other – not like our regimented boxes. His house was in a particularly lovely area.

Second stop was up the winding road to the Pittock Mansion. This is a beautiful house which overlooks all of Portland and Mount Hood. This was built in 1909 by Henry Pittock – who was an English-born publisher. His wife, Georgiana, was the founder of the Rose Festival and Portland is known as City of Roses. Henry climbed Mount Hood 3 times!

The gardens were immaculate and the view went for miles. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see the mountains properly. It must have been great to love there but not great for travelling up and down in those days, especially in winter.

By this time it was 4.30pm so we thought we could get to the hotel ok. I’d emailed beforehand and they advised that we should be able to drive straight in. I’d booked the Rose Hotel and this was right on the waterfront by the park where the City Fair and Concert was to be held. It was also Fleet Week so there were Navy ships on the Willamette River too.

The hotel is part of the Pineapple chain and provide pineapple cupcakes every afternoon for the guests. I was straight there to sample one! It’s a boutique style hotel and extremely comfortable and modern. We easily found the hotel and valet parked. $20 per night which was a good price and the only time we had to pay for parking at any hotel. After exploring the room we headed out to the City Fair across the street.

I’d always wanted to go to a County Show – so this was pretty close. There were so many different sorts of highly unhealthy food. We’d decided to eat here so Will had a foot long sausage wrapped in bacon on a roll, which he declared was amazing! I was after the deep fried apple which I’d seen on Diners, Drive Ins and Dives but couldn’t find any. I settled on a chicken wrap from the Greek stall instead, so saved a ton of calories!

The rides were pretty different to those we’d seen in UK (not that we go to fairs at all often) and the whole thing stretched a very long way down the waterfront park. We walked up and down looking at the attractions – I wasn’t too impressed with a couple of animal ones. A wildlife rescue concern which had lots of animals in cages including a Sumatran Tiger and a lady selling Sugar Gliders as pocket pets with cages to put them in. The kids were enthralled by these. Don’t know how many she sold but photography wasn’t allowed and I felt really sorry for all the animals.

Next we walked to the other end of the Fair to the Rozone. This was a concert area and I’d bought tickets online. There were 3 bands. We’d not heard of them and missed the first one. We saw Wild Feathers and Everclear. Both were great. Everclear were local and had obviously been around for a few years. Everyone knew all the words and sang along.

There was a big bar with great service and orderly lines – we had a couple of their special cocktails each. One thing that struck us here especially (and in Seattle) was NO LITTER. People were collecting their friends’ plastic glasses up, leaving their spot and putting them in the bin before returning. At the end of the night with 5000 people watching there was hardly any litter at all, or at the Fair. Unlike here where you’re wading through glasses and food cartons.

The skies had cleared by now and it was a lovely evening. You could see Mount Hood above the portaloos – called Honey Buckets haha!

It all wrapped up at 11pm so we left and went just outside to find the World’s Smallest Park – all 2’ of it – which officially designated and upkept.

With that there were suddenly bicycles everywhere. There must have been at least 1500. It was a tribute to Prince and David Bowie. Lots of people had their music playing from their bikes and there was a lot of purple clothing! It took about 20 minutes before they’d gone and a lot of fun with hand slapping and cheering.

We finished off the night in a local bar called Rock Bottom with a couple of beers before heading back to the hotel. Luckily there was no noise as we were at the back of the hotel so we slept really well.

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[Cannavar]

Thanks again for another great post. No pressure but we leave in 11 days if you can finish the rest before then

[anji]

Hi Cannavar - just been to France for 5 days to visit sister-in-law. Will be back on it tomorrow and promise to finish Portland before you leave. We were only there 2 nights before heading off the Columbia River Gorge. Are you going there too?

[Cannavar]

Originally Posted by anji

Hi Cannavar - just been to France for 5 days to visit sister-in-law. Will be back on it tomorrow and promise to finish Portland before you leave. We were only there 2 nights before heading off the Columbia River Gorge. Are you going there too?

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Yes we are! Thanks! Checking out the waterfalls and hopefully going on a boat ride of some sort

Thanks you.

[mick]

Sounds like a really good night

Joan

[Guest]

We only has a morning to do Portland so only just scraped the surface. Nice city apart from all the winos on 3rd Avenue!