Beaverton – StewsCat

As we continue in our search for a place to settle, we took a trip back up to the Portland, OR region at the end of August into September. They were experiencing their own heat wave, which actually at least may give us an idea of what it is going to be like moving forward as the whole planet heats up. Their “heat wave” was in the mid to high 80s. While the temperatures were similar to soCal, it didn’t feel as warm, possibly with all the trees and greenery. We also decided to stay in an AirBnB this time instead of a hotel to get a better idea of what “living” there would be like.

Our flight brought us in just before/around dinner time so after getting our rental car, we stopped at Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty to pick up some pizzas. Lovely’s has been a James Beard finalist and they also use the locally milled flours (we picked up some flour from the mill on our last visit). They were already very busy with wait times of like 1.5 hours (this was a Tuesday at around 5 pm) so we elected to get some to go orders and eat at the AirBnB. We chose two different pizzas along with a salad (semi-healthy)? We had the Fresh Mozz with Basil pizza and the House made fennel sausage with lacinto kale, sleeping beauty, and rosemary.

Overall both very good pizzas. After dinner we swung by one of the local specialty grocer chains (New Season’s market – think similar to Whole foods, sprout’s) to pick up some items for breakfast and some fruit as well.

Our AirBnB location was off of Scholls Ferry Road just south of the 26 and east of the West Slope neighborhood. It reminded me of Palos Verdes estates some – very hilly, big nice houses, lots of trees. Honestly aside from the steep hills with no sidewalks/narrow streets, it would be a good place to live, though probably not the best place to be able to walk out of the house and go for a run.

The following morning we decided to do something touristy because we were going to be there for 9 days and figured maybe it wouldn’t be as busy during a weekday (with Labor Day weekend upcoming). Both D and I love our cheese and even in southern CA we busy Tillamook. We hopped on the 26 heading towards the coast and then switched over to the 6 making our way through Tillamook State Forest and popping out at Tillamook right near the Pacific Ocean. Turns out that the school year hadn’t started yet and many people were doing one last trip before the start of the school year so it was fairly crowded at the Tillamook Creamery. You can do a self guided tour on the 2nd floor that overlooks the factory area and packaging. The first floor has a large gift shop area and also a counter order place to get food, ice cream.

We decided not to get food here and drove down the road to the Blue Heron French Cheese Company. This was a much smaller operation and had more of a local market feel, with just a few blue cheese samples. D ordered a sandwich from here but I saw across from Tillamook was the Old Oregon Smokehouse and I wanted to get some smoked fish, seeing as we were so close to the ocean. I purchased some clam chowder and some smoked salmon and then went back to Blue Heron to eat with D.

Previously (many many moons ago) I had driven up the Pacific coast with my family and do remember the Oregon coast being quite beautiful especially the beaches with large rock formations just off the beach in the water. D hadn’t seen them before so we headed north up the 101 past Bay City, Rockaway Beach and over to Cannon Beach. Unfortunately it was a very overcast foggy day so difficult to see the rock formations. We did walk around the downtown shops and drove back to see Haystack rock some. As I was making a turn onto a street, suddenly we were confronted by 3 large elk hanging on the side of the road. And then down a smaller street there were maybe a herd of 15-20 just laying down by people’s houses. D looked it up and I guess the Roosevelt elk like to hang out in this area.

Continuing on our exploration of green, a few weeks ago we headed on up to the Portland area. We had visited twice in the past but mostly stuck with the downtown area and a little bit of east Portland. The goal this time was to explore the surrounding neighborhoods including crossing the northern state border into Washington. Since we were also going to be doing lots of driving, we tacked on a stop in Eugene as well (given my hobby of the last 15 years of running).

Luckily there are direct flights out of John Wayne Airport. Arriving in the early afternoon, we picked up our rental and first stopped for a late lunch before making the 2 hour drive to Eugene. We hit up Nong’s Khao Man Gai at the southeast Portland location and enjoyed some chicken rice (IYKYK) and tried their Chicken Salad Rolls, and I had to get the chicken skins as well. Still very tasty.

And then before the drive we stopped at Push X Pull coffee shop. The barista was nice and also a runner and told me how he just ran the Eugene half marathon and how great it felt to finish on the famed Hayward Field track. He mentioned the drive was a little boring, which I agree with, though it was still prettier than driving on LA freeways.