Portland Day Four....part one?

By the time the fourth day rolled around, I was ready to start looking for a house. I seriously did NOT want to leave. How could you want to leave someplace with a view like this???


Plus,there is still so much more to see. We will definitely be visiting Oregon as often as possible. Eventually, I'll find the perfect small town out there to suit Ryan, me, Mom, Will, and all the dogs.....and then all of you will have a free place to stay.

We spent a lot of time Saturday just cruising around seeing the town and some of the mountains. We did some shopping. There's a trendy little area on Hawthorne Avenue that has a lot of cool shops and restaurants. They had a vintage music memorabelia store that I could have spent days in. This mural was outside the vintage music store. I wish I would have taken more pictures while we were in that area. I was so distracted by everything that I kind of forgot.

I found a little info that I thought was interesting about the Hawthorne district in Portland:

per Wikipedia:

Hawthorne Boulevard was named after Dr. J.C. Hawthorne, the cofounder of Oregon's first mental hospital. The road was originally named Asylum Avenue. In 1883 the Oregon State Hospital moved to its present location in Salem. The street was renamed in honor of Dr. Hawthorne. The change from the "distasteful" name was at the behest of the local residents.

Everywhere we went you could see Mount Hood. It is the largest mountain in the Cascade Range. We never actually went to visit the mountain. We really didn't have time, but like I said, we'll be going back.

I made Jeff stop on the side of the road so I could get some pictures of the mountain. We did get a few others from a different spot that turned out pretty good.Yes, I was standing on the interstate, facing traffic taking pictures.....damn tourists!!!!

Blackberries grow like crazy everywhere out there, so we all picked a few while we were on the side of the road. Most of them weren't completely ripe, but they were delicious!!! We had blackberry slushies with a twist later that night!!!!!Another thing that was kind of interesting was these water fountains on the sides of the roads. You would see them at the bottoms of the mountains, and you can stop and fill jugs of water with fresh glacier water. We saw people with several jugs filling them all over the place. The water was freezing and tasted so pure...it was awesome!!!!This was just another beautiful highway we drove down. It had the best views of Mount Hood that we saw all week. I could be perfectly happy just driving all day in Oregon.



This is Jeff and Karen's house. I think it's funny they live in the burbs...that's so not like them. But, they have a beautiful home!!!!The nieghborhood they live in is gorgeous. You can see Mount Hood from the back yard and part of Mount St Helen's on the clear days. We were all out walking the neighborhood checking things out when I took this picture of Ryan and Karen. Then we went and picked more blackberries.......YUMMY!!!!!

There will be one more entry for day four of Portland. I just couldn't fit it all in one......so next up is the Japanese Garden and Rose garden....and then our trip home.

.................I'll be back soon!!!!