20230814 Portland Mission Accomplished

 Monday, August 14, 2023

We got an early start and were on the road by 7:30am.  Traffic heading south into Portland was surprisingly not terrible.  We did see plenty of "unhoused" tents set up in the grassy areas along Portland's freeways and highways.  Interestingly, there were many places where trash bins were set up in proximity to these tents so there was much less in the way of prolific trash heaps that you see all over the similar areas in Seattle.  If providing free municipal trash pick up is a Portland strategy to lessen the blight of unhoused communities popping up all over the city, it seems to be working because the Rose city, at least on the surface, appears less trashed than the Emerald city.

Our first destination was Bob's Red Mill in the Portland suburb of Milwaukee.  Bob's Red Mill is an employee owned company which produces foodie grade milled grain products.  Janet had heard about it from someone who highly recommended the factory tour, but since the pandemic, the tours were discontinued.  But there is an extensive gift shop, displays and restaurant.  We arrived just as they were opening at 8am.  It was a very pleasant 72˚F as we walked across the parking lot and toured the store and ordered breakfast at the food counter.  The menu is pretty extensive for breakfast and lunch items.  Janet had a breakfast sandwich on a biscuit, while Ben had the chicken and waffles.  The chicken and waffles was excellent with the chicken tenders being generous in size, country breaded and and the waffles were crispy and very delicious.  We had to buy some of the Bob's Red Mill pancake and waffle mix, and received a secret tip from one of the cooks.  She substitutes club soda for water to add lightness and crispiness to the waffles, and even uses 7-up when she makes large batches for events.  This produces sweeter and crispier waffles.

There was a new REI store in the Clackamas Mall so we stopped in and found some nice walking shoes in the clearance racks.  Then we headed across town to the Washington Square Mall where Ben picked up his new laptop and accessories at the Apple Store and Janet found a new cruise outfit at Macy's.  Our last Portland stop was the Costco near PDX airport for diesel and shopping.  The temperature had hit 114˚F by late afternoon.  Walking from the RV into the store was like hiking through a Scandinavian sauna.  Thank goodness for air conditioning!  

On our way back from Portland, we stopped in Longview, WA where our friends who own one of the Chinese restaurants at home have an uncle who owns the Golden Palace restaurant.  We had dinner which included appetizers, soup and two entrees.  Much to our surprise, instead of two small bowls of soup, they brought out a full tureen that could have served 4-6 people, and each entree was a full platter, so we ended up taking most of it home in take out containers after eating all that we possibly could.  Our advice for anyone considering a meal there is to come hungry and bring friends and family to help eat it all.

When we arrived back at the Boondockers Welcome host in Toledo, two of the other guests' rigs had moved on, so the site between the house and garage with 30A power was available for us.  It was still 103˚F when we arrived, so it sure was nice to be able to plug into her 30A power and run the air conditioner to get the RV cooled down.  We'll see if we can manage to stay up late enough to look for shooting stars again, but we may end up falling asleep before it gets dark enough tonight.