Portland, will you marry me?

Northwest adventure completed.

In four days, we crammed 30 hours of driving under our belt, 1 of which found me behind the wheel. Tennessee handled the other 29. I always pair myself with people who can't handle being passengers. Luckily, I'm a very good passenger. Here is where my sluggish metabolism and distinctly absent desire to accomplish things in life really get a chance to shine as my best qualities. I can sit for hours and hours without moving and not go insane.

Low motivation to achieve aside, let me confirm the idea that, first of all, Northern California is beautiful. Driving through the mountains was stunning and great. The air! So fresh and so clean. Ain't nobody dope as the mountains. Oregon and Washington were pretty too. I am a northern lady, for sure. Fir trees and moss and mist are all up in my alley. I was sort of hoping to see a waterfall in slow motion while a logging truck glided past a la Twin Peaks, in fact, it was so close to how that show looked I really figured I'd see the one-armed man or the log lady walking by at any moment. That whole state seems to be quirky. I really do understand why Lynch films all take place there.

Second of all, Portland is a way cool place. Everyone there is nuts. Everything is weird, but in the best way. Some cities, you can tell people are trying to hard to be "cool"; The eccentricity is contrived or forced. This city just seems to genuinely be filled with happily bizzare people who don't give a crap. The super weirdos just sort of blend in with everyone else. Even the preppy go-getter types still have at least one piece of clothing from the Goodwill on. And vegetarian restaurants? Hell yes! Everywhere! It's the most bike friendly and vegetarian friendly city in the USA. Here's the good part though, it's not hippies. It's just really progressive, liberal people.

The amount of vintage shops is astounding also. We went to one that was so big I got lost in the middle and didn't know how to get out. The beauty of the place was that it was real vintage junk, not fake and not overpriced. They also had the courtesy to lay out the place in the most haphazard and nonsensical way, so that you really felt like you were hunting through the estate of some insane old lady that collected crazy things her whole life. I could have lived in there for days. And cheap!!! Cheap and no tax.

The book stores are the same; everything ever in print, no matter how small and independent and cheap and no tax. We were sad to have to leave it behind after only a day.

The day before, we spent in Olympia, WA. Another super cute and quirky little place. A little too heavy on the hippie side though. Again, plenty of the vintage shops and veggie-friendly food and good record stores and all that, but it's small enough that the youngsters sort of have their heads up their asses a little. You know, how people can think they've reached their pinnacle when they have no challenges? Kinda like that. Olympia has a good start to being a cool place, they maybe are just a little too self-satisfied to keep up the good work though. It seems to be a place on the decline. I really like it there anyway. It's a port town and sweet and cute with just the right amount of seasoned kookiness to balance it out. I bought a great pair of orange sherbet coloured pants from the 70s for 8 bucks and had a good salmon burger, served by a guy that looked like what Michael Stipe would have turned out to be, had he never joined a band and became a small town waiter instead. Points to the man for serving the entire place with a bandaged up left hand.

We didn't have much of a master plan for Olympia, hoping instead to just find something to do. We saw a flyer on a record store window for a cafe that was having a cabaret night including clogging, a puppet show and fake beat poetry. Obviously, that was meant for us to go see. After narrowly avoiding staying in the worst hostel ever, we went to the address of the cafe, which turned out to be a couple's house. Once a month, they fill their living room with tables and chairs and candles and make a few dishes to serve and have friends perform in a little lit up corner of the living room. They were young kids who were the sort of hippyish people I mentioned above but it was a really cool concept and pretty neat of them to go through with. We had a good vegan meal, daiquiris and watched an orange-haired girl play her own songs on her ukulele, singing about good sandwiches and polyamorous love.

Did I mention that I had a full-on, hacking, coughing, nose-blowing, lozenge sucking, head-cold for the entire trip, starting the night before leaving? Well I did. It sort of sucked, but I managed to have a good time in spite of it. It could have been worse. We didn't stay out as late as we might have or troop around town as much as we normally would have, but we both feel we had a full and tasty passage through the northwest. I declare it a fine place to go. Fine indeed.

Please go here to see the photo evidence of our adventure.

Drawings to resume promptly.