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All the things you’ve heard about Portland are true. The city has an excellent transportation system (TriMet), two beautiful rivers (the Columbia and the Willamette), easy and rewarding recycling, acres of green space and lots of character. We were enchanted by it!

Of course there are downsides. Portland’s metro area population is over 2.1 million and urban sprawl connects small towns from the foot of Mt. Hood to Hillsboro in the west, both rivers are heavily polluted, there’s a huge homeless population, the city has a shady past, and a rampant drug culture (not the happy hippy kind, we’re talking heroin). I suppose that description would fit any large city in America, even Tucson (just without the rivers).

You could say Portland is a college town since Oregon’s largest university, Portland State University, and Oregon Health Sciences University are both located here. You could call it a suit and tie city as it is home to one of the 9th Circuit Federal Courts, Nike and Intel. You could say its a bastion of liberal thinking as it is the only state with a “Death with Dignity” (physician-assisted suicide) law. You could say its a perfect fit for those who don’t want to fit in, bumper stickers everywhere proudly proclaim “Keep Portland Weird.” Any of those statements alone would be wrong but all together they sum up Portland nicely.

We really like Portland but we have only visited during the summer when the city is at its greenest, warmest, and sunniest best. Even then its not always sunny. During our two week stay we had three or four gray, drizzly, low hanging cloud days—I can’t imagine months like that. One of the best things about Portland for us is the friends that we have there. My good friend Lisa, her husband Gino, and her mother Becky, Lance’s friends Seth, Jacob and Terry, and a co-worker, Michael, who lives just over the Washington state line. Spending time with our friends made Portland even more enjoyable.

We stayed at Roamer’s Rest RV Park in Tualatin, a suburb of Portland, along the Tualatin River (more of a slow moving stream and I do mean sloooow). It was a great location since we could take advantage of Portland’s transportation system and we were close to Lisa and Gino.

We were only in the Portland area for a few days before we drove to northeastern Washington, all the way up by Spokane. We had a great reason for going: Lisa and Gino had invited us to see the Dave Matthews Band in concert at the Gorge Amphitheatre! The Labor Day weekend concert was one of the last of the tour and the band rocked the place. We were on our feet the whole time, they focused on their old hits (our favorites), sprinkled in some new ones and came back out for three encores! What a show.

The drive up there in Lisa’s gas-saving Toyota was half the fun as we followed the Columbia River for much of the trip. We left early enough that we had time to stop off at Multnomah Falls to admire the tall waterfalls. The area is called the Columbia River Gorge, which runs east from Portland to the Deschutes River. It has been protected since 1986 as a National Scenic Area and it is scenic; windy as heck but scenic.

Back in Portland we immersed ourselves in the city, learning and exploring as much as we could. To get familiar with the city’s background I started at the Oregon Historical Society Museum which was hosting a Smithsonian exhibit, The American Presidency- a Glorious Burden. While I enjoyed the Oregon history exhibits (where I learned that the Douglas Fir owes its name to David Douglas, a Scottish man who botanized in the Pacific northwest for the Royal Horticultural Society of London) the Smithsonian one stole the show.

The Presidency exhibit looked at four aspects: the founding of the office and its purpose, the process of getting elected, life (and death) in the White House, and the role of the office. Not only was it extremely informative, it was packed with artifacts like the inkstand that Lincoln used when he drafted the Emancipation Proclamation. It is a traveling exhibit and I highly recommend it.

Portland’s history fascinated me. Chinook Indians had a seasonal settlement at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers until the arrival of settlers in the 1840s. It was settled in 1844 by two men who shared the homestead. Each man wanted to name it after his hometown: Portland, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts. In an effort to be fair the name was decided by a flip of a coin. By 1845 Portland was a bustling frontier town.

At one point the city was known as the most dangerous port in the world due to the “shanghaiing” that went on there. Underneath buildings and streets in Portland there is a series of tunnels that were used from the 1850s to the 1940s for various nefarious purposes. They still exist and are called the Shanghai Tunnels.

In bars throughout town able-bodied men were drugged, dropped through trapdoors, and sold to ship captains. If he survived, once on board the sailor was enslaved to the captain. Since most ships at that time were bound for the Orient, it became known as shanghaiing. Of course, women were not safe either and many were sold into prostitution. The tunnels evolved over time; uses included opium dens, Prohibition era bars, and gambling rooms.

Meanwhile, aboveground, “Sweet Mary” was quite a savvy business woman. She knew that sailors had needs and she was able to provide for them while eluding local jurisdiction (and taxes) by operating her bordello from a river boat on the Willamette River.

Things started to calm down after the turn of the century with citizens like Simon Benson. One day he smelled alcohol on his workers’ breath after lunch. When they told him they drank beer because there wasn’t any clean water around, he promptly installed twenty public drinking fountains throughout the city. I drank from one of them, and it still provides good, cold water.

During one of our wanderings around downtown we came across a Flexcar. What a brilliant idea! It works on the principle that when you live in a high density urban area you don’t need a car everyday (who needs all the parking hassles?) but sometimes you do. So, Flexcar has cars, small trucks and vans parked all over town. You make an online reservation, pickup your car and return it to its reserved parking spot when you’re done. No car payment, no maintenance, no insurance, no gas (yep, they provide the insurance and the gas), no hassle. Now, I haven’t tried it so there may be problems with it but I really like the idea! They claim that each Flexcar can keep 15 individual cars off the road.

Of course we spent time enjoying Portland’s green spaces. The handy lightrail, MAX, runs underground and uphill to Washington Park which encompasses the Hoyt Arboretum, the Japanese Garden, the Portland Zoo, and the World Forestry Center. The 185 acre Arboretum was started in 1922. It is open to the public, and is pet friendly (Lisa and I took her dog, Luna there for an afternoon).

While I enjoyed that park, my favorite is Tryon Creek State Natural Area. Lisa, Luna and I walked through this state park located within the Portland metropolitan area. That this pristine park exists surrounded by millions of people is a testament to the city’s dedication to the environment. It is Lisa and Luna’s favorite park and I must say they have good taste!

To be continued…

Photos: Portland photos are in our Portland album.

Dates: We stayed in Tualatin (Portland area) from 08/27/06 to 09/10/06.