Portland

Portland is a simply laid out city with a prodigious Vegan community.  Large amounts of bikers battle for riding space on the streets among the cars. Despite the fact that there are so many bikers, only a small portion of downtown (from what we saw) offered an actual bike lane. The city is currently experimenting traffic flow with bike lanes.

We spent one night in Portland and went to the all Vegan Pub, Bye & Bye for some local beer and Vegan meatball subs before crashing for the night. In the morning we headed to the Columbia Gorge where large narrow waterfalls are prominent.

Afterwards we headed to downtown to Powells Bookstore "the worlds largest independent bookstore" where we browsed the used and new sections across multiple floors. We walked casually around downtown, pausing for a Gelato for Jack and stopping to take pictures of Portlandia, The Goddess of Commerce statue emerging from the Michael Graves' building.

In the late afternoon we headed to Montinore Vinyards...one of my favorite wineries. They are a small family operated biodynamic and organic vineyard located in the heart of the Willamette Valley. Their flights are only five dollars and we were given generous amounts of wine for the selections we picked. After sampling some very tasty wines (the region is known for their Pinot Noirs, which Jack sampled) we sat on the balcony over looking the vineyard, each with our respective glasses and the picnic we brought consisting of, pepper crackers, olives, and local organic sheeps milk cheese. While the staff was nice, friendly, and knowledgeable, our favorite staff member was Miss. Kitty - the wineries cat, who sat with us throughout our meal.

That evening we went to Beverly Beach State Park to camp across from the ocean, in a very well kept state campground that had *gasp* showers! We took a walk along the ocean front watching dogs catching frisbees at dusk before calling it a night and heading to Northern California the next day.

Oregon is gorgeous and offers great beaches and camping as well as a low key downtown life in Portland.