Oregon / Washington, Part 3

I'm in Portland tonight, staying at the Best Western "Inn at the Meadows", a motel between the airport and Interstate 5.  Nice enough place.  I do wish that motels had bellhops, though.  Something I'm carrying makes my suitcase too heavy to lift and it's getting to be hard to work up the strength to schlep it in and out of the car.  I feel like I need a down day, so I may opt for a second night here and just spend tomorrow reading, watching TV, and doing laundry.

I spent two days in Astoria, getting scenic tours and good food from Marina and Tom.  It's a lovely town, but it didn't take me long to feel waterlogged.  I need rain, but I'm not sure I need all the rain that the Oregon coast gets.  On the other hand, it gets HOT inland, and I do need coolness.  I did get a small surprise today -- Marina was going to take me to lunch at the Bosnian restaurant, and even though their sign said they would be open today, they weren't.  I guess, from what Marina said, they're a bit "bohemian" about their opening hours, and don't open if they don't feel like it.  We had lunch at T. Paul's Urban Cafe instead, which presented me with a quesadilla the size of my largest dinner plate at home.  Even better, it was delicious.  I ordered a praline sundae for dessert, which was also delicious.  Diets start when I get back home.  Last night we had fish and chips at the local pub, only I ordered "squid and chips" and got a hot hot hot meal of the most tender squid fingers (squids have fingers? I hear you ask) I've ever had. Wonderful.  Unfortunately the coconut cream pie was commercial.  They advertised that they made their own pies, but maybe it's just the berry pies that are theirs, because this one was definitely mass produced.  Too bad.  Still worth the trip.  And the pizza joint in Cannon Beach (nice town) the day before was WONDERFUL.  Marina said they got rated as one of the top 50 places in the United States for pizza, and I believe it.  I'm not a pizza person normally but I think I may be changing my mind, between this place and the one in Waldport.  Astoria desperately needs a good breakfast restaurant, though.  Even Yelp can only find three stars for the best one, and it's more of a coffee house.

Cannon Beach was a tourist town, but I'd like to come back and poke around if I can ever walk again.  One of the things I want to do is start replacing my generic white dishes with individual, hand-cast pottery ones.  I could see a store across the street that carried just the thing I was looking for, but I knew I couldn't stand up long enough to cross the street and then wander around the store.  This is doing wonders for my wallet, but it's starting to make me a bit unhappy that I don't have a souvenir of this trip other than the Tillamook cheese I bought on the way up from Waldport.  World's fastest trip by a mobility-challenged individual:  blasting into their shop, making a quick circuit to get what I wanted, pay for it, and back out to the car.  Might have taken me ten minutes, but I think I did it in less.  Maybe I should go for the record next time.

The Astoria motel was the Best Western Lincoln Inn.  My room had a lovely view of a working waterfront (lots of slimy, mossy, weed-choked piles of debris) but the bathroom was such an improvement over Bayshore's that I forgave it a lot.  They had tiled it in those dark, rough tiles for traction and it was a truly roll-in shower, not that slippery plastic thing that Bayshore had.  The towels were still over the toilet but I'm getting used to that.  They had a leather bench against the wall in the bedroom for an unknown purpose, so I pulled it around to be in front of the mirror.  I could just get my chin over the edge of the counter, but at least I could see what I was doing in the mirror while drying my hair.  The armchair looked small and flimsy and was neither.  I got a good snooze in it one afternoon when Marina and I both figured a nap was a better option than more sightseeing.  When I walked back into the room, I was a bit surprised to find out that housekeeping hadn't been there yet, so I chose the chair and put my coat around me and waited for them to show up.  I woke up at 4:45 and called the front desk and found out that they had all gone home -- I'd been forgotten.  The young guy's response was sort of offhand, although he did volunteer to run towels or anything down to my room.  I had plenty of everything so said no, but when I got my bill the next day, they charged me the full price for the room.  I'm going to write to the manager and complain.  They should have given me SOME kind of discount for that.  And they had been doing so well, too.

I drove east on Highway 30 after lunch today, intending to stay in Longview, WA (just to say I got to Washington State on this trip) but somewhere along the way I hit the wall, burned out, whatever.  I cruised around Longview, sort of shrugged my shoulders (I was not in a mood to find it interesting), discovered that the part of it I did like was actually a different town named Kelso, and decided to bag it and go to Portland.  On my way out of town, I passed a sign for the Amtrak station, and as soon as I got on Interstate 5 south I drove past the Three Rivers Mall, so I decided to go back someday and give Kelso / Longview a closer look when I felt more like giving it a fair chance.  When I got to Portland, I got off the freeway and just told TomTom to take me to the nearest Best Western, and that is where I am now.

I told Marina that the bad thing about this trip was that it was making me used to eating three meals a day again.  I had cut down to two, or sometimes even one, but I have discovered that breakfast is a Big Deal for me on this trip, more so than dinner.  Tonight I'm going to be happy with my Tillamook cheese and crackers and the occasional incredibly expensive bottle of Snapple from the machine.  Life is not without its thrills:  the vending machine says it will give you one flavor of Snapple, and what actually drops may not be what's advertised.  I hate diet drinks so specifically chose the one that wasn't, and got diet raspberry tea anyway.  Bleah.  Don't like aspartame, don't like raspberry.  Maybe I'll trot out and see if I can find a 7-11 and get a six-pack of something.

Tomorrow may be a blank.  I've made contact with my friend who lives here and we're (hopefully) getting together for dinner.  Otherwise I think I'll just veg.  See you later!