Back home. A short resumé

Awake early on Thursday morning, much too early, though we could almost see the airport runway from our Sheraton hotel, where we had been upgraded to a suite with club access. Had a quick breakfast in this lounge before we departed to return our rental car and to check in. All went quick and uncomplicated, PDX is a very convenient, not too big and crowded, modern airport (left photo). 

Have driven about  720 mi (1.150 km) in 12 days. Adding the 650 mi. in CA it's almost half the amount we drive in Germany in a whole year! Loved our first car, the hybrid Toyota Prius (photo below, right), after having figured out to switch off all the beeping and assistants. Our second, the Chrysler 300 (left photo), was a sturdy, heavy, old-fashioned, clumsy, gas-guzzler. But, not many choices at rental companies currently, and, rates are pretty high, too.

For a change it didn’t rain in Portland this morning (photo), but,,, it rained in San Francisco, where we changed planes. Our direct flight in the Dreamliner (B787) took off about 40 minutes late. Other than on the way over more seats were taken, but fortunately, still always one seat was kept empty in a 3-seat-row and therefore much more comfortable. Flight was smooth, meals sparse (photo belows shows "breakfast"), masks annoying. We arrived almost on-time, but luggage delivery took 45 min. in MUC!

It’s been an interesting trip, very diverse, first California, then Reno/NV and beautiful Oregon - one of our all-time favorite states - at the end. Some heat, in general cooler than we expected, and, more rain in Oregon.

COVID is still an issue, but mask mandates are slowly lifted everywhere in the U.S. – it started in NV. Other then in Germany, Americans still trust a lot in desinfection, wiping down surfaces etc., but don’t mind shaking hands or hugging in general. Many, or rather most, trust the light-weight surgery masks or other textile masks, KN 95 (FFP2) is not worn by the general public. I am not judging whether this is wrong or right, just noticing. Testing stations have become pretty rare, too.

With the exception of San Francisco at the very beginning of our trip, no vaccination passes were necessary to visit restaurants or attractions/museums. 

A negative effect of COVID is the change in service and the lack of personel everywhere! Probably a world-wide phenomenon, but since service was always so excellent in the U.S. more noticeable there. In hotels it’s common not to have daily housekeeping service anymore. Sometimes - which is fair - they tell you at check-in that you need to call if you want service, or, where you can get fresh towels and such. In other hotels they don't. Don't get me wrong, don't mind to make my bed, and fully understand the problem, but a basic service is expected, considering room rates stayed the same or are even higher. Hotels which formerly offered breakfast included in the rate, don’t do it anymore or in a minimalized form.

In restaurants – many times operating with reduced hours, e.g. only Thursday-Sunday or only till 8 or 9 pm – they can only serve so many people as two or three servers or few people in the kitchen can handle. That means, that sometimes a restaurant is half-empty but will tell you to wait for 15 minutes or so because the kitchen is not able to handle more orders. Museums and attractions also often operate shorter hours.

To us the U.S. isn’t quite ready yet for the sometimes over-critical, demanding and picky German/ European travelers. On the other hand, Germans aren't ready to travel overseas yet neither. Though the "high-risk status" of the U.S. was lifted recently (meaning that no extra health insurance is necessary anymore), the testing regulations (24 hours before departure) are still valid as well as the mask mandate on planes, which is pretty annoying on an 11-hour flight like we had to/from SFO. But, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and, hope that the situation with "normalize" soon again!

Sports and Schnitzel

Left the Grand Lodge in the morning for Ron Tonkin Field in Hillsboro. This ballpark is home to the Hillsboro Hops, a minor league affiliate (High-A) of the MLB team Arizona Diamondbacks. They were originally founded in Yakima/WA and moved to Portland/OR. The new 4,500-seat stadium was opened in 2013. Barley (photo below, left) is the team mascot of the Hops, a very successfull and consistent team in its league.

 

We had a tour with the GM through the stadium and learned a lot about the league's system. Also, Peter got another cap for his collection, of course! Drove into Beaverton afterwards and had a wonderful lunch with the Washington County tourism rep in Bar Garten, a German restaurant. 

Beaverton is called "Silicon Forest", since it is the seat of high-tech  companies like Intel or Linux, but also of Fred Meyer and NIKE. The city has an attractive little downtown area with a foodtruck park and is easily accessible from Portland by streetcar. The pork schnitzel - sort of a cordon bleu - with mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts was better than lots of dishes I recently had in restaurants at home!(photo at bottom).

More sports in Portland, at Providence Park (left pic). Two pro-soccer teams, the Timbers (men, MLS) and the Thorns (women, NWSL) use this old stadium, which was expanded recently. The first "Multnomah Stadium" was built in a rudimentary form in 1893 and operated as a baseball stadium from 1926 on. A section of the old wooden benches from the early days are still existing. 

 

 

 

From 1975 soccer was being played in Providence Park, for a certain time games in both sports, soccer and baseball (Portland Beavers), took place here. 2009 the nowadays Timbers were founded, and from 2011 on they were the only team playing in this stadium. In 2012 the women's team, the Portland Thorns came, and, played their first season in 2013 - and are since then equally successful than their male colleagues.

A 2019 expansion raised the capacity to over 25,000 seats and added a multi-level facade to the East End, with great views towards the city skyline:

 

Last stop on our last day: The Architectural Heritage Center in the Central Eastside of Portland. They are very active in organizing public programs, tours, and gallery exhibitions from the wide variety of items owned by the Bosco-Milligan Foundation. Again, it rained most of the day, but we spent the day in an interesting way - thanks, Karen!

 

 

Sake and wine in the Tualatin Valley

Rain had subsided a bit this morning and we decided to explore Seaside a bit more before departing towards Portland. We had coffee first at Seaside Coffee Roasters, another of these cozy little cafés, which we will certainly miss in Germany - hanging out with a cup of coffee in a livingroom-like atmosphere. 

 

We walked along the beach, checked out the historic Aquarium and walked back on the Promenade, lined with many hotels. Downtown around Broadway is the "entertainment strip" with game arcades, the Seaside Carousel, souvenir shops and restaurants. 

On the way we also, passed by another brewery, Sisu, in a historic art-déco theater, the Times Theatre. Many art-déco buildings to be seen along Broadway in this famous vacation destination since the 1870s! 

We drove over the Oregon Coast Range then, on Hwy. 26, also called "Sunset Highway", through dense woods, along the Necanicum River. In about 1:15 hours we arrived to Forest Grove, about 25 mi/40 km west of Portland.  Originally a small farm town, it is now a commuter town for Portland, located in the Tualatin Valley, a wine-growing region.

 

But, Sake first. At "SakéOne" in Forest Grove we met with Steve, the President, who gave us a tour and a tasting. Established in 1992 as a premium Japanese sake importer, they started in 1997 to brew their own high-quality sake in the Willamette Valley with  exclusive rice grown in the  Sacramento Valley. Sake production reminds more of beer brewing than of wine making, but, after we had the tour through the production facility (photos below), we noticed, that it's much more complicated, more refined, more delicate than we thought. 

 

 

Sake's has four main ingredients only - rice, water, yeast and koji (a type of spore) -, but a lot depends on the polish/mill percentage of the rice, of how much of each grain of rice remains. There are many different types of sake, cloudy ones (Nigori), clear ones, chilled ones, infused ones, etc. If you are interested, check out their informative website: https://sakeone.com. Learned a lot today about this special drink!

David Hill Vineyards & Winery, our next stop, is one of not too many wineries in the newly designated Tualatin Hills AVA (wine growing region) in a northern most location within the Willamette Valley. West of Portland and just east from the Oregon Coast Range the climate is special and the soil unique. Also unique here are the old vines, planted in 1965 by a Frenchman, e.g. self-rooted Pinot Noir,  Pinot Blanc, Chasselas, Muscat, Sylvaner, Sémillon, Riesling and Gewürztraminer. More varietals were added later, and, nowadays David Hill probably carries the largest variety of different wines in Oregon, mostly white ones, many of them unusual.

Chad Stock, the winemaker we met, is working for David Hill since 2019 and is very much focused on sustainability and on "natural wines", uses different kinds of barrels and containers and produces unusual wines. No yeast added, only wild fermantation, orange wines, interesting blends - all of that makes this winery very unique! We had a wonderful tasting - including one of their delicious charcuterie plates - in the old farmhouse (photo above) followed by a tour, and stayed for almost two hours before we checked in in the McMenamins Grand Lodge.

McMenamins Grand Lodge is a stately manor with one-of-a-kind rooms and a very special atmosphere. It has a spa, soaking pool, theater, bars and restaurants nowadays, but originally it was a Masonic Rest Home, built in 1922 by the Oregon Masonic Lodge to house the widows, children, and family of their members who'd passed on. McMenamins is a family-owned company in the Pacific Northwest producing beer, wine and other produce and operating pubs and historic hotels of a unique kind.

 

At the "Graveyard of the Pacific"

Rain, out of barrels, coming down diagonally today thanks to winds having picked up. We left our motel in Seaside - which we had to find on short notice after our friends in Astoria, whith whom we intended to stay, got tested positive for COVID recently - towards Astoria. 

We checked out downtown first, to see what's changed, then headed on to the Columbia River Maritime Museum, which was, fortunately, open on a Monday. We talked our way into it without having made previous arrangements, and, enjoyed the great exhibitions, ​an extensive collection of seafaring vessels, maritime artifacts, and fine art. It deals with the history of the Columbia River. Especially interesting: the story of the legendary Columbia River Bar, one of the most dangerous passages in the world, therefore called " Graveyard of the Pacific", about the Coast Guard and about the fishing and salmon canning industry in town.

Here, where the Columbia River enters the Pacific Ocean it is not gently flowing out to form a delta, which happens when most rivers meet large bodies of water, but it's fierce and wild.  The mouth of the Columbia and the near-shore areas to the north and south are the graveyard of more than 200 shipwrecks. Some, like the Peter Iredale, from 1906, are visible to this day. 

Since the so-called Columbia River Bar is the entrance to a major commercial waterway with nine ports alone along the Columbia River the bar pilots, established in 1846, play an important role and provide the service of local pilots, boarding the huge cargo ships and maneuvering them safely. 

 

Astoria, St. Helens, and Portland, are deep water ports. Grain farmers in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington use Snake River ports to get their wheat to ports near the mouth of the Columbia River. From there, it is loaded on ocean-going ships. Inbound shipments mostly consist of automobiles, petroleum products, steel, containerized freight, outbound shipments besides agricultural products are timber and mineral products.

The National Motor Lifeboat School was established in 1968 at Station Cape Disappointment, in Ilwaco, Wash., at the mouth of the Columbia River, as the only school for rough weather surf rescue operations in the country. The Coast Guard's (photo above) important role and some of their spectacular rescues is another interesting topic in the museum. 

Also, the salmon canning industry was once big in Astoria. First barrels of salted Chinook Salmon were sent to Hawaii and NY, but  this cargo was likely to spoil and therefore in 1809 French scientists developed a method to preserve food for Napoleon’s soldiers. The first salmon cannery on the Columbia River was opened in 1866 and from then on the business grew. 

 

The building of the old Bumble Bee cannery in Astoria still gives a good idea about the operation of such a fish processing site. It's on Pier 39 and it's a "living history museum", with many old relicts and the atmosphere as if it would just have been left short time ago. In 1899 seven salmon canners had formed an association which grew and became the Bumble Bee Seafoods brand. This museum is sort of a hidden gem, free, and good thing is, that on the same pier the cozy Coffee Girl café (photo further below) offers coffee with the ocean in view.

Back to Seaside, quick stop at the outlet mall there, then on to the Seaside Promenade, "The Prom", a boardwalk along the ocean. The rain hadn't stopped for a single minute all day, to the contrary! On the Turnaround there is a statue for Lewis & Clark and their famous journey across the country, ending in Seaside. 

"Beach Books" and a fantastic Antiques Store (pic below), specialized in model/toy cars, in downtown compensated a bit for not being able to do much outside. The U.S. still has plenty of independent little bookstores - big difference to Germany! 

 

Same for craftbreweries: Even the little town of Seaside had one, Seaside Brewing Company, in a big brick building, the original city hall and city jail. We had clam chowder and a beer there before we called it a day and peeled off our wet coats and shoes.