We stayed for a week here, because we’ve always heard how nice it is, and progressive. It was okay, there is definitely a lot to do, but I think you’d have to love cities in general to want to be here. I think if I liked cities, this one has a lot going for it. But I don’t. I’d have to live out a bit, with a few acres of our own, and just come into the city when we had to. The best thing it has is Powell’s Books. Its an entire city block of bookstore, both used and new. It was incredible. We spent over two hours and I never left the kids section. The kids were happy the entire time. Sean got to look around the store a little more, but since we bought over 50 books for the kids, I thought it best to not find more. We rounded out a couple of series for them, and picked up a bunch of classics, like Wind in the Willows, Huckleberry Finn, and lots more that I’ve never read either. This store is the reason it would be expensive for us to live too near Portland.
There are a ton of farmer’s markets around, we went to a small one in a nearby town, which was nice because it wasn’t too crowded. Then we went to what we thought was a big one in Portland, but we went to the wrong place. We ended up at the Saturday Market, which is pretty much just a huge arts and crafts show. It was very crowded, lots of…interesting…people, and a lot of cool stuff I wanted to buy. I restrained myself somewhat though.
One place we had to check out was VooDoo Doughnuts. Its just a little hole in the wall shop but man, they had some good stuff! Sean got one frosted with maple syrup and topped with bacon. I thought it looked gross but he said it was delicious. I had the Dirty Old Man, which was frosted with Oreo crumbs and peanut butter. We got a big apple fritter which we ate for breakfast the next morning, also delicious.
We had heard McMinnville was nice, about an hour away, so we drove out there one day to look around. We happened to pass the Sokol Blosser winery, which makes our favorite white wine, Evolution #9. We had to stop and pick some up. It was a gorgeous winery. McMinnville was okay, an interesting downtown, but we’d need to spend more time there and meet some people. We found a really big letterbox here, in a little park next to a little airport. One of the trails led out to the runway, and we watched a couple of small planes take off. I was amazed it wasn’t fenced off from public access, but maybe people have more common sense out here in the sticks.
We also went to visit a woman who has Leonbergers one day, which was fun for me. I doubt I’ll take Sophie with me to meet any more though, she’s old and gets knocked over easily in her old age. She doesn’t really want to play with other dogs, and is so nervous about new people there’s hardly any point.
By: Dawn on June 10, 2009