A Portland Holiday

Cliff and I last week had the opportunity to pet sit for Kathy and Jill's animals for a few days.  Since we were still very much in transition we were able to help the out when they needed pet sitters last minute.  We decided that while we were in Portland that we were going to take a holiday.  When we lived in Oregon before we never really went up to Portland.  This was mostly because we were too broke to do anything exciting but we also just got wrapped up a whole lot in school and work.  Jill put together a really nice "to-do" list for us so that we could get the insiders perspective on where to go and what to do.  As always, Cliff and I pretty much just ate our way across the city.

Kathy and Jill have two cats (Lily and Cleveland) and an older dog (Toby).  Rudy was so excited to play with them...it was intense and it overwhelmed all of the animals.  We took several days to get them all use to one another and by the end of our trip they were all able to be in the same room without killing each other or driving Cliff and I crazy.  We considered it a victory.

While in Portland we went to Pine State Biscuits and ate yummy, fancy biscuits.  Mine had fried chicken, bacon, and apple butter and Cliff's had Carolina BBQ with red cabbage coleslaw on top.  He figured the BBQ would be good since the owners are from Carolina.  It was a very hip and happening place.  The music was loud and of the dance variety, the customers were all dressed in trendy fashion, and there was a line outside. The food was great.

We got a chance to explore SE Portland and relax.  While in SE we also ate at Fire on the Mountain (and yes there were lots of paintings of The Grateful Dead) and had some of their amazing buffalo wings.  Jill recommended them and I was a bit skeptical as I thought "how good could a buffalo wing place really be?"  Well let me tell you...their sauces were fantastic.  You could see the peppers and other spices in the sauce.  Really tasty.  Apparently they are going to start selling the sauces in stores so keep your eyes peeled folks.

SE Portland is also home to Distillery Row.  My dad stopped at a distillery in Kentucky as he was coming across country a few years ago and said it was really interesting.  We had never been to one so we figured why not?  After all....we were on holiday.  Portland is apparently fostering a craft distillery movement.  It was a Monday and there were not a whole lot of tasting rooms open but we did luck out as Stone Barn Brandyworks was open.  When we got there we actually surprised the guy as they apparently never have people come by on Mondays.  He was in the middle of making mash for their oat whiskey.   The whole operation was in a small warehouse unit so just by taking one step inside we could see the whole operation as they place was probably 25 square feet.   Cliff did the tasting and really liked their ouzo (it had spearmint in it!) and oat whiskey.  The guy who was working that day was really nice and told us a lot about the operations and gave us a few more suggestions on what to do in Portland.

 

As you all may know pumpkin is my favorite food.  Hands down.  So you can imagine how excited I was when we found out that a local bar (the Green Dragon) was having their killer pumpkin fest while we were in town.  They had 17 mostly regional pumpkin beers, a pumpkin food menu, pumpkin bowling, etc.  I love pumpkin beer but it is really hit or miss in my opinion with finding a good one.  I was excited because they were serving little tasters of everything on tap so Cliff and I got to taste quite a few of them.  Luckily there were more good pumpkin beers in their batch than bad.  We ate buffalo burgers (sadly a lot of their pumpkin main dishes had hazelnuts in them) and some amazing pumpkin pie.  We sat at the same table as a really nice couple and we ended up talking with them for almost four hours.  They had never been to the east coast so we told them about a few places they need to visit if they ever make it that way.  It was a lot of fun.

We got to see Brie while we were there.  We were originally going to go to a bouldering gym (yikes..i know!) but we changed plans when Brie had a meeting at work that was going to go really late.  Cliff and I were both pumped to go bouldering but we realized that we were probably going to be really bad at it as neither one of us are known for our upper body strength.  Oh well...maybe next time.  Instead we got to spend a morning leisurely eating breakfast and talking about running, apartments, family, and making future plans.  We might all run in a few races together.  Both Cliff and Brie have caught the running bug and I am hoping to as well.  It is really nice to have family relatively (ha) close.  I hope we get to hang out more.

Once we were back in Eugene we went to the REI scratch and dent sale.  Oh man did we play that wrong.  We got there right as the sale was starting only to see a line stretch along side of the whole building.  We stood in line for about an hour as we were hopeful that we would find the backpacking tent that we wanted and maybe a rain jacket for Cliff to wear as he bikes around town.  While in line we were reminded that we do live in Eugene.  Besides the guy on a bike who kept riding by yelling about local public transportation legislation and "go ducks!" we also got to witness someone doing yoga waiting in line.  That is right.  He is doing handstands while waiting in line.  See his feet?!?!  <-----  He kept doing it.  Every time it made me laugh a little bit.  Sadly we didn't find our exact tent or a jacket that fit Cliff but I did get a pair of Merrell's hiking shoes for $2.80.  Now I will be able to keep up with Cliff (at least I hope so) as he easily maneuvers over slippery ground when we go on trails.

I am happy to say that we finally got the keys to our new apartment!  We are totally smitten with our new place.  It currently looks like a bomb exploded as we have boxes everywhere but I will post photos once we are officially moved in.

Also, I want to give a late birthday shout out to my mom.  I love you!

Ikea Overload

I didn't think it was possible.  I love Ikea.  Love.   I normally really enjoy any opportunity to go into one and walk around for hours looking at all the cool possibilities.   So when Cliff asked me this morning if I wanted to go to Ikea I almost couldn't get into the car fast enough.  We ate breakfast (only $2.68 total for our eggs, bacon, potatoes, french toast sticks, cinnamon bun, and coffee), walked around the top showroom, ate lunch (two Swedish meatball plates), and then walked around the bottom level.  The whole trip took around five hours.  Normally I would have been skipping out of there with my celebratory $1 ice cream but this time I was just too overwhelmed.  Never have I actually walked through the showroom actually looking for multiple pieces of furniture for an apartment.  There are so many options!  Fabrics, colors, and different sizes (oh my).  Don't get me wrong...I am totally excited to be able to plan out our apartment.  I think I just might need to get my own big breakfast next time.

Willamette to Fox Hollow

Kim and I hiked another portion of the Ridgeline Trail this Thursday. We had planned to hike to the top of Mount Pisgah, but the parking ticket machine was broken and we weren't willing to pay the over 100 dollar fine if we were ticketed for parking without a ticket. There are places in town where you can buy a parking pass, but we figured that we would just come back another day. We are going to look into possibly buying a year pass for Lane County Parks. We ended up hiking from the Willamette street trailhead to the Fox Hollow trailhead.

The top portion of the trail has you hike up through an abandoned pear orchard. Between the trees there was lots of brown grass and dead queen anne's lace.  Some of the trees were practically covered in pears the size of a tangerine. Some of the trees didn't have any fruit on them at all. You could see a bunch of places under the trees where deer had bedded down.

Once we got further on the trail you go through an open feeling forest before you get up onto the side of Spencer Butte where the forest gets much wetter. We took photos of some of the different types of ferns that you can see on the trails.

Almost all of the ferns that you see in the background behind Kim in the middle photo above are Western Sword Ferns. They can grow up to six feet tall and are found all over the Pacific Northwest. According the the Wikipedia article on them they can be used to help relieve the pain from stinging nettle (no word on how to use them to do this), and apparently the rhizomes are edible. 

I'm pretty sure these are Lady Fern, but there are a number of species of ferns that could be growing in the same environment that look very similar varying in whether they are evergreen or not, where they start branching, how thick the stems are, and water requirements. I'll let you know when I find out more.

These are Western Maiden Hair Ferns. They definitely like more water than the Sword ferns do based on where we found them. They were often on the sides of small streams where water was spraying over them. When we started to see them you could pretty much depend on the fact that we were in an area that gets deeper shade and more water. 

 And finally Licorice Fern? I really need to get a book of something. I'd say this is licorice fern with about a 50% confidence rate (not too high). It's too young for me to be able to differentiate it based on spores (as if I could at this point), but it is epiphytic, which licorice fern often is. Furthering my case is the face that Licorice Fern is said to prefer trees over rocks, more specifically big leaf maples. Is the tree pictured a big leaf maple . . . maybe. There were a lot of big leaf maples on the trail. If it wasn't some type of conifer it probably was a big leaf maple. It's exciting how much there is to learn.

I'm not sure how long our hike took. The sun came out while we were in the woods which made for some amazing views once we came out of the shadow of Spencer. It was about four miles from start to finish. We only saw five or six people the whole time. I have other photos of fungi and berries. I will post some of them later.

I don't remember why we took a photo of this tree. I think that it was larger than the surrounding trees. When we were looking through the photos later we realized that it kind of looks like there's a man in the tree on the right hand side. I say it kind of looks like MLK Jr. Kim says Jimmy Carter. I don't see Jimmy Carter at all, but could be convinced that it is someone else. What do you think?

Blanton Ridge Park

Blanton Ridge Trailhead from Google Streetview

Kim and I took a walk from the house to Blanton Ridge Park today. Blanton Ridge is part of the Eugene Ridgeline Park system which has over 1000 acres of parkland including Spencer's Butte, which Kim mentioned in our last post.

According to the pamphlet on the parks put out by the city of Eugene this portion of trails "offers a secluded walk through a mixed forest of towering Douglas-fir and big-leaf maple." You are also supposed to be able to look out over town. Unfortunately the middle of the trail was closed due to trees being down and trail maintenance so we didn't get to that part. We sadly didn't bring a camera, because if we did we might have a picture of a Steller's Jay to show you (they are the only crested Jay west of the Rocky Mountains so you should be very sad to miss out). To appease you I found a photo on Flickr.

Some rights reserved by amhuxham

The trailhead is less than a mile from the house. We decided while walking the trail that our fitness goal should be to run from our house to the top of Spencer's Butte and back. There is no timeline for the completion of this goal. That's about 10 miles round trip with over 1100 feet of vertical gain. That means that over the trip up it averages around a four percent grade. Expect photos taken by us (not the google van) of various points along this trail as time goes on. The Blanton Ridge trail is supposed to be reopened fully on October 28th.