Portland: June 12-13, 2010

- US 199 from Crescent City to the Oregon border was very pretty but very curvy
- Z’s stomach started to bother him again, we stopped for him to throw up outside of the car but he couldn’t.
- In Cave Junction, Oregon, J found Caves Pharmacy and went inside looking for a remedy for Z. These were the nicest, most helpful employees and pharmacists ever. They were convinced after J's explanation of how Z was feeling that it was motion sickness caused by US 101 & US 199. They recommended this motion sickness medicine for kids and also advised that we needed to go to Multnomah Falls, we were planning on another waterfall on the way up to Portland.
- We decided to drive straight to Portland instead based on the pharmacy’s ringing endorsement and check out Multnomah Falls the next day on the way to the Mt. Hood Railroad in Hood River
- The medicine worked, Z’s stomach returned to normal on the drive up to Portland (Hooray!)
- Oregon is like New Jersey in that you can’t pump your own gas (that is probably the only similar thing between Oregon and New Jersey)
- Took in a Portland Beavers AAA baseball game Saturday night at PGE Park, this minor league stadium was awesome compared to the Diamond, there was hardly anyone at the game though which J thought was weird for a Saturday night. All three kids were given Beavers gloves at the gate.
- J got us lost driving back from the stadium to the hotel, one way streets and various bridges over the Willamette River (stadium was on the west side of the river and our hotel was on the east side of the river) got him majorly confused
- 0% sales tax (yea!)
- Caves Pharmacy employees were correct – Multnomah Falls was breathtaking, highlight of the trip thus far. It’s the second tallest year-round waterfall in the U.S. at 620 feet in height. We wanted to go the full mile up but thought that would be difficult with A and with slippery walkways, so we only went to the bridge 0.2 miles up. Z and B still got wet, though, which thrilled them.
- The fish in the river that the falls dump into were trying to swim upstream, so we watched them go nowhere for a few minutes.
- Mt. Hood Railroad – probably the biggest disappointment thus far. It’s too bad. That was the one activity that J was looking forward to the most. You couldn’t see Mt. Hood that well from inside the train. The 30 minute stop in Odell was worthless. It was a 1 street town of hopelessness. The tour guide trumped a Mexican restaurant and a “cookie lady” who sat under a tree. Oh by the way, you could only see the top of Mt. Hood from Odell. The most amusing thing on the train ride was some guy’s fashion sense. He had a blue T-shirt tucked in to his green colored shorts. T-shirts tucked into shorts look weird enough but mixing in green shorts was something to see.
- Town of Hood River where the train originated though was very cute
- Tried to get donuts at the critically acclaimed Voodoo Doughnut but the line was very long and the names of the donuts were not kid appropriate.