Our general travel route for this week...
Anyway, we awoke, Monday morning in Lincoln City, to another one of those misty, slightly rainy, chilly west coast mornings so we decided to just stop at Starbucks for a coffee on the way out of town rather than get the stove out to make our own. We packed up, headed off north through town, stopped for the coffee and were on our way.... all the way to Salem about 60 miles away.
The drive northeast on highway 22 is a nice pace and very picturesque. It took just over an hour before we pulled into the Premier Resort about 5 miles west of downtown Salem. This is a very pretty park. Our site is close to the restrooms and has colorful rhododendrons on each side...
After getting set up we headed into downtown Salem for the afternoon. Never been here before. The historic center has beautiful old buildings. We drove around for awhile to get the general layout then parked and walked around eventually into the Salem Center which is a number of blocks of shopping all interconnected with plus 15 walkways (kinda reminded us of Calgary). The Nordstrom store here doesn't have their Bistro so we wandered around a bit then settled on a corner bar and grill (lost receipt so don't have a name for it) for a decent couple of salad lunches. Afterwards we drove around a bit more, found a Safeway then a Fred Meyer where, between the two of them, we picked up some oysters, veggies and wine for dinner back at the RV park.
Tuesday we drove a loop from Salem northwest to McMinnville, north east to Tigard then back south to Salem. The day's route looked something like...
It was a pleasant drive up highway OR-99 to McMinnville past lush green farmlands and vineyards. McMinnville seems like a decent small town with a very nice walkable main drag for 4 or 5 blocks. We found a place to park on main street and wandered up one side and back down the other. In between we found a series of great shops, including a yarn store, a huge quilt and fabric store, and a most excellent bead shop before resting in a nice little deli where we picked up lunch. After lunch and a bit more wandering about we headed northeast on OR-18 to Tigard and the Bridgeport Village Shopping Center where we spent a couple of hours including time in the Container Store to pick up some new storage bins (our big waterproof bin suffered a wounding and needed to be replaced, so we opted for two smaller ones instead of a single larger one). After the mall we decided to take the faster I-5 route south back to Salem. Even though it was after 6:00 pm by this time the rush hour traffic was still very heavy on the freeway.
Tuesday night we planned our route to Troutdale, the eastern suburb of Portland where we have previously stayed at the Sandy RV Park. Rather than go north up I-5 we decided to stay entirely off the freeway. We chose to head east out of Salem on OR-22, OR-213, and OR-211 through Silverton northeast to Sandy then north to Gresham and into Troutdale where we stayed at our regular Sandy Riverfront RV Resort.
This is a very picturesque drive and much better than the freeway with nice easy flow of traffic. We stopped for a break in Sandy and had a nice lunch in Calamity Jane's Burger Parlour...
Portland was it's usual wonderful self, the weather not withstanding. Wednesday afternoon as we were getting ready to drive into downtown, Brian noticed the front driver's side tire on the car seemed a bit on the low side. Hmmm.... anyway we drove in and as we approached Powell's Books in the Pearl Distric we saw a Firestone dealer a block before Powell's... we went in and they told us they could look at the tire but it would take at least a couple of hours. Sweet... free parking! (well not quite... it turned out that we had a puncture which they repaired for a rather inexpensive cost of $20; parking in Powell's for that period would have been about $15). Glad we found it before we got out on the freeway with the trailer! While the car was in the car hospital we spent some time in Powell's and walked a couple of blocks up to Kris' favorite yarn store where, yes, another knitting project was born. For dinner we stopped in at a crowded brewpub where the atmosphere was good but the food was somewhat mediocre.
Thursday we did some more Portland driving and shopping in and around downtown. On the way into the city we stopped at a Starbucks in Laurelhurst where, after having a coffee, we strolled around a bit and found some pretty cool looking restaurants any of which will make a good discovery next time we are in Portland. After that it was into downtown for shopping (Nordstroms) and to check out a couple of Dick Blick art supply places. After lunch in the Pearl District we headed over to the Hawthorne District for a bit of afternoon wandering.
Since the weather was continuing in it's inclement vein, we decided not to spend any more time in Portland in the rain (been there, done that)... wonderful place but if you are just running from place to place trying to stay dry the pleasure dissipates in a hurry. So, Friday morning we packed up, stopped at a local Starbucks for some coffee and hit I-205 then I-5 for a straight run up to Seattle. Getting from Portland to Seattle on anything other than the freeway can be really time consuming so this is one place where we have often opted to just suck it up and go freeway. It's not so bad though... just set the cruise for 60+ mph, take it easy, and let the world pass you by. We stopped in Tacoma at a Camping World store and picked up a couple of folding chairs and a few other accoutrement for the wee trailer then on to the KOA in Kent, about 15 minutes or so south of downtown Seattle. After getting the trailer set up we drove over to the Southcenter mall area and had a nice California Pizza Kitchen dinner.
Saturday morning we headed into Seattle with our first stop being Daniel Smith, south of downtown in an industrial area, for a look around their art supply store. Great selection of paints, books etc, some of which had to come home with us. After that we continued on into downtown and parked in the big parkade across from Macy's. Nice and central. Downtown Seattle stroll should always include a wander through Pike Place Market and this time was no exception. For lunch we found a seat in Lowell's where we overlooked part of the market while we ate excellent seafood salads...
Outside of the "original" Starbuck's there was a long line of customers waiting to go in. Also outside was a busker's station where the busker definitely had a captive audience with the line right there. We stood on the curb and watched a couple of performers, a group singing Gospel songs and a guy playing a banjo...
... both were excellent so we purchased a cd of each (listened to them in the car later and they were quite good).
We thought we might buy some fresh cooked crabs at the market but it turned out that all the crabs, although cooked, were previously frozen (most still were) so we passed on that thought. Instead we stopped in at the California Pizza Kitchen for munchies and a couple of glasses of wine (and a large chunk of so-so Red Velvet cake), then called it a day.... but before we forget, on the way out of downtown Seattle on 1st Street we passed Starbuck's Central (aka world head office)...
Sunday we packed up and drove south on I-5 for a couple of hours to Longview then headed west along the Columbia River valley to Astoria.
Usual boring freeway going south but the drive west of Longview was quite pleasant. We stopped in Westport at the Berry Patch. Another nice lunch but they were out of Huckleberry pie. Double drat!!
We decided to stay at the Astoria KOA. Huge beautiful place. Nice and quiet this time but it appears that it could get very crowded and noisy during the busy summer season. After setting up the trailer we headed into Astoria. Unfortunately the Sunday farmer's market was just closing up when we arrived there but we got to see a few of the booths still in operation. We wandered the old historic downtown a bit where there were still a few stores open but it was starting to get a bit chilly so we decided to do some driving around. Up the hill from the historic district are some utterly beautiful old houses with fabulous gardens. One place in particular gave us some ideas and the woman of the house was out gardening so we stopped and chatted. She seemed quite proud to show us around her garden....
Further up the hill we came across a sign pointing to the Astoria Column. Not having a clue what it was we followed the signs up the hill only to arrive at a spectacular hilltop providing 360 degree views over the valley, harbour and ocean...
... To add to the view is the actual "column"...
... where the panoramic views would be even better. The circular design of the column reminded us of Trajan's Column in Rome, Italy.Unfortunately due to foot issues we decided it would be best not to try the climb up the tower. When we finished driving around we stopped at Fred Meyer for dinner fixins then at the South Jetty Restaurant and Bar to watch a bit of the Tigers and Rangers ball game (we saw two of Miggies 3 homers!) before heading back to the KOA and a lovely home made dinner to finish off the week.
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