Lots of gorging going on: Portland edition

I knew approximately three things about Portland:

1. It is located somewhere in the Northwest. Ask me to differentiate it from Seattle on an unmarked map and I would have, at best, a 50% chance of getting right.

2. Based on reporting by famed documentarian, Fred Armisen, it is a designated hipster preserve.

3. A new friend, who is earning cool points by the bucketful, has spent a lot of time there. As a result of this, he send me off armed with what some would call an exhaustive list of recommendations.

Now here's one thing I did not know:

1. How cold it could get. By conflating it with Seattle, I pictured gray, rainy days but nothing that would require serious layering. I was oh so very wrong.

I rolled into town just in time for a massive snowstorm that was so disruptive it shut down schools, offices and many of the roads. I guess Mother Nature had not taken into account that I had a very long list to abide. High on said list was a visit to the Columbia River Gorge, a canyon that cuts through the Cascades Range and forms the boundary between Oregon and Washington.

Initially, I figured I could still do this. It was only a 30 minute drive from downtown Portland. I'm a knitter so I had a new sweater and matching scarf to keep me warm.  I was nicely fortified from my steady diet of Blue Star Donuts.  I got this. So I reserved a rental car and went to grab a bagel while waiting to be picked up. That's when I eavesdropped on some truckers that had just come from  the direction of my scenic destination. Words like "skidding", "sliding" and "jack knifing" were getting thrown around with wild abandon. I approached the truckers with a couple of questions and learned that the high winds generated on the mountain passes make it the absolute worst road to drive on. "Hello Enterprise, I'm a Floridian and I think I've made a terrible mistake."  Chalk it up to more new information about not-Seattle.

But just because I was genetically unfit to do that drive does not mean that others couldn't do it. With that in mind, I signed up the next day for a Gorge Tour. (Note: if you haven't already realized that at some point in this post, I will inevitably describe the scenery as "gorge", you clearly don't me)

The next morning, the driver/ guide picked me up at my hotel.  It would be just us and a young med student from India. The sun had come out and melted a lot of the ice on the roads, leading me to believe that perhaps I could have done it on my own.

And by do it myself, I mean I think I could have gotten from point A to B without careening off the road into a certain death but I also know I would have been white knuckling it the whole way. I would not have been able to enjoy the majestic snow-covered landscape that enveloped us.

I also would have no clue where to stop. Sure, I would have made it to the "famous" waterfall but I would have sped past a lot of really cool smaller falls (and to clarify, by "sped past", I mean I would have been going 25 mph and annoying all the traffic behind me but I'd be doing so in a very determined fashion).

Luckily, our guide was a local who grew up camping and hiking around the area and had plenty of favorite spots to show us.

He therefore knew which trails would be most doable and provide us with the biggest payoffs.

Sweater and scarf by me. Red Velvet boots by a mean witch I happened to land on.

One thing I love is when a guide is genuinely enthusiastic about whatever the topic at hand may be. Doing something you love always shows. Our guy was into it. He was taking as many photos as we were. Apparently, this amount of snow is not the norm and being amongst the first people on this road once it had reopened left us a lot of pristine photo ops. 

The only place where he bowed out and left us on our own was, oddly enough, the star attraction. Multnomah Falls is easily the most photographed spot in the entire gorge. It is also home to the Multnomah Lodge, which has the only restaurant and gift shop I spotted along the way.  I think the promise of the restaurant's warmth and the awareness of what lay ahead may have had something to do with his decision.

The trail leading to the falls was kind of icy but not in a crazy slip and slide kind of way.

That honor would belong to the eponymous bridge itself. Something about cascading water, lots of mist, high winds and freezing temperatures to make for a challenging stroll. I got about halfway across with all the grace of a newborn giraffe before turning back in defeat.

It was, how should I put it... gorge as all get-out (you were warned!) but I was mighty grateful to be back in the warm van. I also felt like I was done with the whole hiking thing.

An exception was made for the Vista House, primarily because the hike was more of a walk across a paved parking lot.

The octagonal Art Nouveau structure was designed by Edgar M. Lazarus and completed in 1918. Despite its grand name and architectural pedigree, it was actually simply a rest stop. Or according to locals of the time, it was a $100,000 outhouse. At this time, cars were becoming more commonplace and obviously, this would have been a spectacular road trip. The well-heeled wanted to take in the sights but could not be expected to drop trou and just pee on the side of the road like the rest of us, thus this marble, bronze and green glass rest area came to be.

 

The remains of an abandoned lodge that burned down.

In the 1880's, this area was home to a mining town called Bridal Veil. There was a paper mill, church, residential buildings, a school and all the other stuff you would find in a remote mining town.  Eventually all the industry either burned down or simply left and by 1960, the town was abandoned. In 2001, a conservation group lost its battle to save the town and most of the buildings were razed but one of the survivors was the post office.  Unlike the fancy toilet (which is on the National Register of Historic Places), the post offices sits in an old mill tool shed and is one of the smallest in the country (10x14). What has saved it is the name of the town.  Couples sending out wedding invitations are willing to make the trek in order to get that "Bridal Veil" postmark.

It was already time to head back. As our guide returned us to the city, he had a long list of recommendations of places we should go to eat, drink and be merry during our stay in Portland.  Now, this is a city with more great food and killer bars than any other I can think of in the US so no list is going to be exhaustive. However, this was an area though were I felt confidently prepared.  And I was right, Mr Ramon's list did a fine job in shaping the rest of my stay in this hipster haven and left me with enough options to fill up my next 3 visits, all of which I am totally looking forward to.