Our general travel route for this week...
Sunday was a beautiful blue sky day. We decided to head into old town Florence for a riverfront patio lunch. We chose the ICM Restaurant where we sat out on the dock patio and lunched on oysters, crab cakes and a wedge salad for Kris and a shrimp louie salad for Brian. Very nice, albeit a tad on the expensive side for lunch. A few years ago, when we stayed here, at Mercer Lake, there was a fellow with a glass blowing workshop just off the highway into Florence. Yesterday we noticed his sign out again so, after lunch, we thought we would stop in and see what kind of blown glass projects he had available. We chatted with Jason for a bit before Brian decided to do a large (ish) glass float. Jason had just finished with a previous customer so we had to wait a bit while he got things ready but soon enough we were underway. Brian picked out the colors he wanted to use and Jason got everything ready. Jason did the first bit then showed Brian how to add the colors and then it was down to blowing...
... more pics of the whole experience are on our picasa album. We had to wait until Monday to pick up the finished product.
It was a nice late afternoon to sit out by the lake then we finished off the smoked tuna and salmon, from Winchester Bay, for dinner. We also finished off Season One of the Game of Thrones.
Monday morning we headed into Florence to pick up the glass piece. Unfortunately there was an accident on US 101 north of Florence and we got stuck in traffic for about an hour just getting to the glass place. When we finally drove by the site it looked like somebody had hit a pedestrian as there was a car with a large dent in the front and a totally shattered windshield. Later, an article in the local paper confirmed this. A 48 year old man apparently just walked out into the heavy traffic. The article hinted at suicide. We feel sorry for the 19 year old driver of the car.
Anyway, we picked up the blown glass piece and are very happy with the results...
Leaving the glass place we drove into Florence and went to the Safeway for some lunch and dinner munchies including some bbq'd short ribs (very mediocre). All in all we took well over an hour in Florence before heading back to Mercer Lake. The traffic going north on US 101 was still backed up and we waited another half hour or so in that line. Back at the lake we found most people who were going to check out today were still there. The park folks apparently told everyone to stick around and enjoy the park rather than sit in that traffic. Good idea since the weather was perfect for an afternoon at the lake. The young kids around certainly didn't mind the extra time here. Early evening about half the folks in our area of the RV park departed.
Tuesday morning the rest of the folks around us packed up and departed. We are now alone in this beautiful spot...
We drove into Florence, checked out Copeland Lumber (just to see the kind of stuff they had there compared to non-depot places at home), went to a bank to get change for laundry, and stopped at Fred Meyer where we picked up some smoked Steelhead and a nice coleslaw for lunch and a couple of packages of local oysters to fry up for dinner. On the way back to Mercer Lake we stopped at the Darlingtonia Wayside Park. Very interesting plants. You walk down a path in the forest and all of a sudden it is like you are in a totally different strange place...
Although we had booked the rest of the week at Mercer Lake, with the weather being so good inland we decided to backtrack up to Portland (the last 2 or 3 times we have been in Portland it has been very rainy) to take advantage of this weather. So Wednesday morning we packed up, reserved a spot for next year labor day weekend, paid our bill and headed out. The fastest way to Portland would be to head to Eugene via OR-126 then just take I-5 north but we decided to stay on secondary highways. Just west of Eugene we turned north on the Territorial Hwy through Corvallis then turned east on OR-22 past Salem to I-5 for the last 35 or so kms to Wilsonville where we booked 2 nights at the Pheasant Ridge RV Park. Nice drive through the countryside for most of the way. When we booked the site we requested to be as close to the restrooms as possible. Turns out, in this fairly large park, that they placed us pretty well as far away as you can get (there are two spots past us). Oh well, just means that a pee break in the middle of the night might require a drive! Nice looking park but no picnic tables so no major meal preparations to be done here. Anyway, we arrived around 1:30 PM so it was lunch time. After getting set up we drove a few miles north on I-5 to the Bridgeport Village Mall for lunch at California Pizza Kitchen and a wander around the outdoor mall stores including the Container Store. For dinner we picked up some deli chicken, coleslaw, beet salad and potato salad at Fred Meyer.
Thursday, after a lazy coffee morning we headed off to Fry's Electronics to see if we could find a new FM transmitter for our iphone. We're looking for one that charges at it transmits but no such luck and the best their staff could do was to recommend looking on Amazon. Seems their staff is very good at sending customers elsewhere. Fun store to look around in anyway. Then it was off to Costco to check out SonicCare toothbrush sets then a bit north into Tigard to Washington Square and lunch at Nordstroms. Washington Square is a large mall so after lunch we spent some time wandering around in Nordstrom, Macy's etc. Then it was time to find a Sonic (America's Drive In) for a large diet cherry limeade... aahhh! Late afternoon by now so stopped in at Camping World to pick up some more trailer leveling blocks then back to Costco to purchase the SonicCare since we didn't find a better price elsewhere. For dinner we returned to Fred Meyer and it's deli for some smoked Steelhead and salads for dinner.
Friday we packed up and headed a bit northeast to Troutdale, on the east side of Portland, to stay at the familiar Sandy Riverfront RV Park. Gerry was at the desk when we arrived just after noon. We had originally booked a spot through Sunday night but asked if we could stay one more and he confirmed that our spot was available for the extra night. It was a good thing though that we had booked more than a few days ago as the place is now full up through the weekend. On our way through Troutdale, to the RV Park, we noticed that the old location of Shaken (the martini bar we frequented a few years ago) has re-opened and re-branded under the name Troutini so we decided to walk up there later for a sip or two. Meanwhile after checking in we drove up to Gresham where we had a decent outdoor lunch at The Local Cow a place all themed out in "cow". After a bit of shopping in Gresham where we picked up a new FM transmitter that also charges an iphone 5 at Best Buy, we stopped at Fred Meyer for some dinner fixings then back to the wee trailer. Put everything away and walked up to Troutini where we had the largest baked brie appetizer one can imagine. It was easily enough for 4 people to share and pretty well did us in as we ended up skipping dinner later. That night we finished the second season of Game of Thrones. Since it looks like we'll finish it with lots of time to spare on this trip, while in Best Buy we also picked up the complete series of The Wire. Should be good.
Saturday we headed to the Portland Craft Market. What a great place to wander around in for a couple of hours. Fabulous crafts of all sorts and no shortage of food stalls (if one is hungry at the time that is). Kris picked up a cute little bracelet made out of a bicycle spoke for all of $15...
After the market and a stop at Knit Purl (for another project) we drove over to the Pearl District. We had lunch at Henry's Tavern. College football game day in these parts as every TV in the place was blaring the sport. We had a couple of salads for lunch but unfortunately they had over spiced the tuna on Kris' and over bbq sauced the chicken on Brian's so much so that the basic taste of the salads were totally lost. Oh well... after a wander around the Pearl and a stop for an iced latte at Pete's Coffee, we headed to Powell's City of Books to spend a couple of hours browsing their shelves before calling it a day and heading back to the RV Park to cook up the salmon we bought for yesterday but didn't get to. Continuing beautiful weather to end the week.
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