Weekend in the Rose City
Mr. E and I spent a long weekend in Portland to visit with my family, including A, R, and Master F, whom Mr. E met for the first time (I made his acquaintance last year over the Halloween weekend, when he was just 7+ months old). Although we both had to work on Friday, I was able to limit my remote time to a half day and joined the family for lunch and the afternoon, and then Mr. E came over for dinner.
We stayed at the Embassy Suites Hillsboro, where Mr. E has been maintaining his "second residence" during all of his recent travel for work. The hotel room suite was as large as a decent-sized 1-bedroom apartment and clearly had been recently updated.
On Friday morning, I went for a longer run along Evergreen Avenue, which led past some of the corporate campus areas nearby. I discovered the paved Rock Creek bike trail, which I used for part of my run and was rewarded with a rabbit sighting. Bunny, bunny, bunny! I almost got detoured a few times by the tempting wild blackberry bushes along the side of the road, but I avoided temptation and got to enjoy cherries at the hotel breakfast buffet each day in addition to fresh raspberries and blueberries picked from the bushes in my cousin's yard. Yum!
On Saturday, Mr. E and I spent the morning at the hotel and then met up with the family crew at the Mississippi Ave Street Festival in North Portland. Scenes from the Festival are below, including some rather interesting decorations hanging on the overhead wires along Fairing Street.
We wandered around to browse the various vendors and taste some samples. Mr. E and I eventually ended up at Silver Moon Creperie for lunch while the others went to the Ecliptic Beer Garden (M and R) or tended to F as he started to get fussy (W and A). On our way back to the car, we stumbled upon a lemonade and bake sale stand at a nearby intersection and couldn't resist purchasing a piece of raspberry coffeecake and some fresh organic strawberries from the two industrious young ladies who had put everything together.
Mr. E and I made a quick stop in downtown Portland at Foot Traffic to pick up race bibs for the Be The Match 5K run the next morning, for which Mr. E, A, and I had registered (this was my race for the month as part of my annual fitness goal for this year). We then had a couple of hours at the hotel before heading to nearby Ron Tonkin Stadium to meet up with the crew again for an early evening Hillsboro Hops game.
The Hops are a Single A short-season team affiliated with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Their mascot is (appropriately) a big green hops named Barley who led the crowd in "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch.
Since the Hops were winning handily by a score of 9-2, we all left in the bottom of the 8th inning to avoid the exiting traffic. Mr. E and I enjoyed some wine in our room, and Mr. E also had a couple of cocktails from the lobby bar.
The next morning, we picked up A and drove downtown for the 5K race. The course was relatively flat, along Naito Parkway right by the river. However, we did have a slight obstacle when a freight train crossing the street caused a delay of about 5 minutes -- I've never had that happen before during a race! All we could do was laugh and wait (and stretch), and luckily we didn't have a similar issue on the return journey of the out-and-back course. We made a Starbucks post-race stop and then dropped A off at the house on our way back to the hotel.
After getting cleaned up, I packed my bag to stow in the car for my departure later in the afternoon, and we did a little shopping at the nearby Ross, Sports Authority, and Payless (we had hit up Old Navy the day before). We then had lunch with my family at their house and hung around for a couple of hours in the afternoon, enjoying the shade in the backyard, before Mr. E took me to the airport for my early evening return flight to Sacto.
A lovely weekend in the Rose City, with not-too-humid weather and quality family time!
We stayed at the Embassy Suites Hillsboro, where Mr. E has been maintaining his "second residence" during all of his recent travel for work. The hotel room suite was as large as a decent-sized 1-bedroom apartment and clearly had been recently updated.
On Friday morning, I went for a longer run along Evergreen Avenue, which led past some of the corporate campus areas nearby. I discovered the paved Rock Creek bike trail, which I used for part of my run and was rewarded with a rabbit sighting. Bunny, bunny, bunny! I almost got detoured a few times by the tempting wild blackberry bushes along the side of the road, but I avoided temptation and got to enjoy cherries at the hotel breakfast buffet each day in addition to fresh raspberries and blueberries picked from the bushes in my cousin's yard. Yum!
On Saturday, Mr. E and I spent the morning at the hotel and then met up with the family crew at the Mississippi Ave Street Festival in North Portland. Scenes from the Festival are below, including some rather interesting decorations hanging on the overhead wires along Fairing Street.
We wandered around to browse the various vendors and taste some samples. Mr. E and I eventually ended up at Silver Moon Creperie for lunch while the others went to the Ecliptic Beer Garden (M and R) or tended to F as he started to get fussy (W and A). On our way back to the car, we stumbled upon a lemonade and bake sale stand at a nearby intersection and couldn't resist purchasing a piece of raspberry coffeecake and some fresh organic strawberries from the two industrious young ladies who had put everything together.
Mr. E and I made a quick stop in downtown Portland at Foot Traffic to pick up race bibs for the Be The Match 5K run the next morning, for which Mr. E, A, and I had registered (this was my race for the month as part of my annual fitness goal for this year). We then had a couple of hours at the hotel before heading to nearby Ron Tonkin Stadium to meet up with the crew again for an early evening Hillsboro Hops game.
The Hops are a Single A short-season team affiliated with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Their mascot is (appropriately) a big green hops named Barley who led the crowd in "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch.
Since the Hops were winning handily by a score of 9-2, we all left in the bottom of the 8th inning to avoid the exiting traffic. Mr. E and I enjoyed some wine in our room, and Mr. E also had a couple of cocktails from the lobby bar.
The next morning, we picked up A and drove downtown for the 5K race. The course was relatively flat, along Naito Parkway right by the river. However, we did have a slight obstacle when a freight train crossing the street caused a delay of about 5 minutes -- I've never had that happen before during a race! All we could do was laugh and wait (and stretch), and luckily we didn't have a similar issue on the return journey of the out-and-back course. We made a Starbucks post-race stop and then dropped A off at the house on our way back to the hotel.
After getting cleaned up, I packed my bag to stow in the car for my departure later in the afternoon, and we did a little shopping at the nearby Ross, Sports Authority, and Payless (we had hit up Old Navy the day before). We then had lunch with my family at their house and hung around for a couple of hours in the afternoon, enjoying the shade in the backyard, before Mr. E took me to the airport for my early evening return flight to Sacto.
A lovely weekend in the Rose City, with not-too-humid weather and quality family time!
posted by jms | 9:08 PM
1 Comments:
Was a pleasure to meet the men in A's life! Looking forward to more time in PDX...
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