Adventures in Portland!

I feel like I've been a little more erratic than usual in my jewelry making and blogging lately... part of that is due to a fun vacation my husband and I took out to Portland, Oregon at the end of last month.  I thought I'd do a little recap of some of the highlights for you (and for my own memory's sake!)  Since Eric is chronicling our trip over on Beerploma from a more detailed and beer-centric level, I'd suggest checking those posts out especially if you're looking for more details on the beers.  You can find his first post HERE. 

The reason (excuse?) for our trip to the West Coast was ostensibly for the National Homebrew Convention (I refuse to call it by it's new, stupid name.)  Thousands of thirsty beer geeks would make the pilgrimage to Beervana for the conference and surrounding activities.  In an effort to beat the rush, and give us way more time to explore the area, Eric and I flew out almost a week early.  Two of our good friends and fellow homebrewers Ron and Denise came out the same day so we kidnapped (beernapped?) them for most of our beer explorations and shenanigans starting with hitting a bunch of breweries on arrival day.  Life is always more fun with friends!

Our first full day dawned sunny and gorgeous... perfect for more exploring and a food tour!  Eric and I started our day with a jaunt over to the Blue Star Donuts located just a few blocks from our place to get some coffee and sugary sustenance to jumpstart thing.  Everyone raves about Voodoo Donut but seriously, do yourself a favor and go to Blue Star instead! 

I couldn't wait to take a picture before taking a couple of good bites from this lovely!

The day's main event was a food tour with Forktown Food Tours. After having done one of these on our last trip, Eric and I were more than excited for the Downtown and The Farmers Market tour that we signed up for with our friends.  We started with a little plate of items curated from the amazing Portland Farmers Market and then had some free time to explore a bit before heading off on the rest of the adventure.  I highly recommend checking these guys out if you find yourself in Portland... so much food, drink, scenery, and local history!  I promise you won't go hungry and, even if you've been to Portland before, you just might discover some new favorite places!

Just some of the yumminess from our tour!  Curated plate from the Farmers Market; dip and cocktail from Southpark Seafood; Handmade pasta from Grassa; Adorable & delicious cupcakes from Saint Cupcake.

One of the things that I love about Portland is all the interesting murals, interesting buildings, graffiti, and public art.  One of the things we learned from our tour guide this time is that the city commissions a number of new murals each year... so there's always going to be cool new art to look at around the city!  I know that Eric captured a lot of cool ones that I didn't... another reason to check out his series over on Beerploma!

Sunday we started with an amazing brunch in our Air B&B neighborhood at Interurban before heading out to Tillamook and the coast for the day.  This may be the best Bloody Mary I've had... or maybe it was the combination of good friends, tasty food, gorgeous weather. 

Our main reason for heading this direction was to get to the brewery that got away last time... the elusive de Garde Brewing.  This time we were successful!  We took a little detour to the coast for some beach combing and photo fun and then headed to fun (and cheese) filled visit to the newly remodeled and expanded Tillamook Creamery.

Monday was our other road tripping day, this time headed east to Hood River.  The goal was lunch and delicious beer at one of our very favorite Oregon breweries, pFriem Family Brewers.  We made a couple of stops along the way most notably the Bonneville Fish Hatchery, home of Herman the 70 year old, 10 foot long, 450 pound sturgeon.

Taking a little break from all the beers, we joined a group of friends we know through the Minnesota homebrew community for a day of winery tours in the Willamette Valley.  We made stops at four different wineries plus had a delicious lunch at Red Hills Market.  As seems to happen every few years, I once again learned that wine sneaks up on me WAY faster than beer or even liquor.  Glad our friends arranged for a Pinot Car for the day for us all!

Fun with our friends on our Willamette Valley winery tour!  

One of our favorite places to take friends and explore is the flagship McMenamins property Edgefield.  It's just on the outskirts of Portland and a wonderful compound that includes a hotel, numerous bars, gardens, pool hall, spa, winery, distillery, two par three golf courses, concert venue, movie theater, and more!  We enjoyed wandering around the grounds with Ron and Denise, trying some more of the beers, and even doing a wine flight!  Eric hopefully got a couple of good shots of a hummingbird who was really enjoying some of the flowers.  (As an aside, if you're not familiar with McMenamins, they own a variety of hotels, pubs, and more throughout Oregon and Seattle.  Many of their locations are historic properties that they have renovated and given new life.  Edgefield, for instance, was originally the county poor farm.  They are super quirky and fun to explore.)

Art and plant life from the amazing McMenamins Edgefield

When Eric and I travel, we tend to have one big splurge meal.  For this trip, that meal was at Mae.  I had read about this place when looking at an article on restaurants in Eater and was intrigued by the idea of Appalachian cooking with the bounty of the Pacific Northwest.  Mae is currently a pop-up restaurant that's in the back of another bar/restaurant and only has seatings on Monday and Wednesday for the time being.  (They are working on a brick and mortar location that will be all their own.)  The seating was family style and we had the pleasure of sitting with some folks that we met in the parking lot as we were all looking for the entrance.  Dinner was amazing... especially the vegetable courses.  I actually ate so much of the early veggies that I barely had room for the main event... fried chicken and fixins!  It truly was a lovely meal with an embarrassment of culinary riches!

I'm not going to lie... the rest of our trip was really a blur of breweries, the social parts of the homebrew conference, and food.  Instead of going into lots of detail, I'll just leave you with a couple of photo-collages that sum things up. 

Over the course of our 9 day trip, we hit up lots of breweries and brewpubs.  This doesn't capture the half of them and they aren't all my favorites even.  But this is a collection of the most photogenic beers that I captured!

Travel, food, and beer... things best enjoyed with good friend.  So, cheers to you!  And cheers to our friends who shared our Portland adventures with us this year! 

On the Oregon Trail: or Adventures in Portland and Beyond

I wanted to take a tiny break from jewelry here on my blog and share a little bit about my recent vacation to Oregon with my husband and our good friends Kathleen and Shea.  I'm just going to hit the highlights of our week on the West Coast here... Eric is doing a much more detailed account of our adventures over on his blog.  He's especially good at chronicling the breweries (and meaderies, and distilleries) that we hit along the way.  Check it out over on his blog starting with Day 1 HERE!  Apologies in advance that this post might get a little long and has lots of pictures!

Upon arrival in Portland, we headed for the coast and our night's lodging in Pacific City at the Inn at Cape Kiwanda.  Of course, we made a couple of beer and snack stops along the way but still arrived with plenty of time for a nice walk along the beach before getting dinner at the Pelican Brewing brew pub.  Our internal clocks still being on Central Time, we woke up pretty early the next morning and explored the beach and surrounding sand dunes some more before breakfast.  I loved discovering all the tiny tide pools amongst the rocky shore... so much magical life there!

Tide pools!  And a wider view of the rocks that hide them.

A panorama shot of the magnificent view hidden on the other side of the dunes.

As we were checking out of our hotel I noticed that they were selling bags of rabbit food.  Upon inquiring with staff, we discovered that there is a huge population of semi-wild bunnies in Pacific City that will come when you shake a bag of food.  We couldn't resist!  I had a great time feeding bunnies from my hand while Eric did an impromptu photo shoot.  After that it was into the car and on the road back to Portland so we could pick up our friends from the airport! 

The view from our hotel room, more pictures from behind the dunes,
Eric finds a brewery, and a behind the scenes look at Eric's bunny photo shoot!

Day three started with a hearty breakfast at our hotel (we stayed at McMenamins Kennedy School, Eric talks much more about this unique hotel over on his blog HERE) and some exploration around the grounds.  The main event of the day was a fun (and filling!) food tour of the Alphabet District and NW 23rd Avenue with Forktown Food Tours but we fit in some breweries and such too.  I can't speak highly enough of our tour and tour guide (the company's owner Heidi!)... it was fun, delicious, and informative.  Just as we hoped, it was a great way to kick off our vacation.  Beyond the tour itself, Heidi gave us some great recommendations for hiking spots and more.  I can assure you that we did not leave the tour hungry or thirsty!  Next time we find ourselves in Portland we will definitely take one of their other tours.

A few shots from our fabulous food tour!

We got a fairly early start on day 4 (Friday) with a quick breakfast in a hotel courtyard of Blue Star Donuts and chouquette pastries from St. Honore Boulangerie that we took home from the previous day's food tour.  Our day's destination was Hood River.  It's an easy day trip when you are based in Portland with a breathtaking drive through the Columbia Gorge.  We stopped along the way to do a hike to Wahclella Falls.  None of us are what you call real hikers, but this was a nice loop that was at a good pace for our group.  Lots of beautiful scenery along the way including the falls themselves.  It was hard to tear ourselves away from the water, but eventually we got hungry and had to continue on! 

The lovely Wahclella Falls!

We were in Portland over Mother's Day.  We started the morning with brunch at place Heidi our tour guide recommend to us called Interurban.  Amazingly, most of the shops in the neighborhood were open pretty early for a Sunday morning so we walked off our delicious food and drink and checked out the sights and stores of Mississippi Avenue for a bit.  Next on our agenda for the day was a visit to the International Rose Test Garden and the Portland Japanese Garden.  With it being the weekend AND Mother's Day, both gardens were pretty crowded but still beautiful and well worth the trip.  As you can see from the photos below, the roses were going strong during our visit!  

Over the course of our week in Oregon, we hit up many fine eating and drinking establishments.  In fact, I counted 20 breweries or taprooms, 3 distilleries, 1 meadery, 1 winery, and 1 cider maker.  (My liver may need a vacation now!!)  I won't bother going into great detail on all of them since I know Eric will be doing that on his blog, but I'll give you my highlights and a photo collage!  Some of my favorite breweries were places we went to on our last trip:  Hair of the Dog, Cascade Barrel House, and Pfriem.  New to us this trip I really enjoyed Breakside, Commons, and Logsdon.  Another happy accident was stumbling upon a little meadery called Stung and getting an impromptu tour!  

Pelican, Commons, Pfriem, ABV, Olympia Provisions, Logsdon, Hair of the Dog

I'm so thankful that we could take the time out of our busy lives to connect with our friends on such a fun vacation.  Like many of you out there, our friends are spread far and wide... making it difficult to see them as often as we would like.  As long as this post is, it really just scratches the surface of our journeys.  Good food & drink, great friends, plenty of belly laughs, gorgeous scenery, and much more!  I think it's fair to say we all had a great time exploring in Oregon!!