What to Do in and Around Portland, Oregon?

Here is today's question of the day...

What awesome things do you suggest we do and visit during a few days in and around Portland, Oregon?

Coastal Route or Crater Lake?

One of the most difficult decisions we are currently making is whether to take the coastal route north from Redwoods National Park to Portland, or to go inland to Crater Lake National Park.

Crater Lake, OR

Port Orford, OR

I really want to see Crater Lake, but when I see images of the Oregon coast and hear about camping right on the ocean, it makes the decision so difficult.

What would you do??

Share your tips for our upcoming adventure

I have been so excited to share the news that we have booked flights for a trip to northern California and the Pacific Northwest! Colin and I have been talking about this trip for a few months, trying to find the best time to go, and we finally found dates that worked for us.

We will have 15 and a half days to explore northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia/Vancouver.  As I read through the travel books on the area, I look forward to all of your suggestions on places to visit and things to do while in the area.  We have a flight into San Jose and a flight back from Portland, but the days in between have yet to be filled.  My initial itinerary has us spending a few days in San Francisco, followed by a drive up the coast of California to the Redwoods. From there, I'm torn between heading inland versus staying on the coast. I think it'd be cool to check out Crater Lake, but I also really want to see the Oregon beaches.  We will definitely be visiting Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, but I would like to see some of the national parks that are around the cities.  Some of the parks I'm interested in (based on travel book reviews) include Olympic National Park, Mt. Rainier National Park, Mt. Hood National Forest, and we can get into all of the national parks for free with our America the Beautiful Pass.  But every day we spend in one of the parks, or driving to a park is a less day we have to explore the cities.

I can't wait to get some use out of our National Parks Pass

Here is my challenge to all of you, my friends, family, and blog readers who have some knowledge of the area: please share any amazing things to do, places to see and stay that I should consider on our journey.  


We will likely camp in some of the parks, and look for airbnb.com room rentals and hostels in many of the places where we go. We'd like to keep our itinerary fairly flexible so we can spend more time in places we love and avoid places where weather might dampen our experience (pun intended) as we go.

I look forward to your suggestions and can't wait to share our experience with you later in August and September!

For now, I'll leave you with the process for booking our flight:
For the past 7-9 weeks, I've been checking flight prices every Tuesday and Wednesday, looking for a good deal from Raleigh to San Francisco (and surrounding airports) and back from either Seattle or Portland. During most of those weeks, roundtrip flights were ~$499 per person.  About 2 weeks ago, that rate went up and I got nervous that we hadn't made any plans.  These past two weeks, I've struggled to not look at flights daily.  I think flight searches are monitored and can cause prices to go up, so I kept waiting until Tuesday to look again.  With Raleigh flights hovering in the $530-$550 range this week, I extended my search to other airports in the area.  This search proved fruitful when I found a flight from Charlotte to San Jose (near San Fran) for $135 and a flight from Portland back to Charlotte for $153.  That's right, the roundtrip flight came out to $385 per person. Even if we park at the Charlotte airport for 16 days, at $5 a day plus the cost of gas ($35 a tank), the $885 we'll spend flying through Charlotte is still less than it would have cost us to have one less day on our trip and fly out of Raleigh.

I will admit the process can be tedious, but being able to take a great trip every year is worth it and Colin and I are overdue since we didn't get to take a "vacation" to a new destination since 2010. That year we were so lucky to visit New Zealand/Australia for the Christmas and 2009-2010 New Year, and then use miles to go to Cabo San Lucas for a wedding just 3 months later!

Thank you all for reading the blog.  And remember to share with me your suggestions for our trip. I can't wait to hear them since so much of my joy comes from the planning!

Final Leg of the Tour de Northeast - Boston

Now that it has almost been a month since our "Tour de Northeast", I figure it's about time to wrap up the details of our trip.  If you've been reading along, you know that we fit a lot into those 5 days!

After a relaxing morning and lunch in Albany, spent with Colin's parent's and his best buddy, Brian, we drove a little over 3 hours to my friend Erin's house near Boston.  We had spent the weekend in Burlington with Erin, as she was one of the UVMers, but I had not yet met her 14-month-old daughter, Reilly. To meet Reilly and make it convenient for our flight out of Boston on Tuesday, we decided to spend Monday evening with the Leonard family.  Their cute New England home sits just steps from the beach in Marblehead, on the north shore of Boston, and we enjoyed our evening with our wonderful hosts!

Erin and her husband, Paul, at the wedding in Burlington

Playing with Reilly

Reilly is such a sweet girl, and was very willing to hang out and play with Colin and I. She spent the evening taking care of her baby and showing us her toys and cars.  She joined us for a delicious grilled dinner, but didn't quite make it through the whole thing before it was time for a bath and bedtime.  In my experiences with babies, they do need to stick to their routine and we were not about to ruin that!

We adults did finish our meal and chatted for a bit, but didn't last much longer than Reilly before it was time for us to go to bed.  

Tuesday morning, Paul was gracious to drive us to Boston's commuter train and we all took the train downtown.  After grabbing some breakfast burritos from a local deli/breakfast bar, we walked to the waterfront to enjoy the view as we ate.  The tall ships were supposed to be in Boston, and I looked for them, but could not see any. I've probably been to Boston (to hang out) a total of 10 times in my life and I'm pretty sure I've been there more times since leaving RI than when I lived there!  Needless to say, I didn't even know where to look for the ships.

After enjoying our breakfast and walking along the waterfront for a bit, we found ourselves in the Italian section of Boston - the North End.  Back in May, when Colin and I went up to RI and NY for Mother's Day (I didn't get around to blogging about it), my brother took us to the North End for dinner.  On that trip, we ate at the Florintine Cafe, which served us two mediocre (and rather expensive) Italian meals.  The highlight was obviously not the dinner, but rather the canolis and cookies from Modern Pastry Shop.  My brother and his friend taught us about the pastry war between Modern and it's rival, Mike's Pastry, and I believed it seeing the long lines at both places. Since we had bought Modern Pastry canolis and cookies on that last trip, we decided to try Mike's on this trip.  At 10am, there was no line and all the delicious pastries looked fresh.

Cupcake and Cannoli from Mike's Pastry

We took our cupcake and cannoli to go and continued our walk through Boston to Faneuil Hall, where we enjoyed them in the cooler air under the trees.  Both the cupcake and the cannoli were very tasty, but not any better than Modern Pastry.  And, I will admit that neither cannoli in Boston was as good as the ones we had from Termini Bros in Philadelphia.  Hands down, those were the best I've ever had!  If you love Mike's Pastry, take solace in my disclaimer that I was still not feeling 100% when I ate the cannoli from Mike's Pastry. I may have to reevaluate when I'm back in Boston and feeling better!

Enjoying desserts under the trees near Faneuil Hall

From Faneuil Hall, we made a quick stop at Boloco, a burrito joint found mostly in Massachusetts.  Boloco was listed on the sustainable food website, EatWellGuide, and admits to environmentally conscious practices on their website. I'm not really sure what is meant by "naturally-raised meats" but they do use organic tofu, and claim to compost, reuse and recycle.  We wanted to compare the burritos at Boloco with our favorite burrito shop, Chipotle.  Chipotle, similar to Boloco claims to offer "food with integrity."  I appreciate Chipotle's description that they try to support local, organic, and/or family farms and try to use antibiotic and hormone-free meat. I recognize the challenges companies face in producing food for the masses, but I prefer a company that is honest about what they are really trying to do. The word "natural" always brings out distrust in me because there is no definition for what this means.

With our Boloco burritos in tow, we decided to navigate Bostons' public transportation system to the airport, something we had not really done before.  We took the blue line subway to the airport stop and then connected to the free bus shuttle to the airport terminal.  While I may not know Boston, living in NYC taught us both a great deal about public transportation and using maps, and I'd say we looked like we knew what we were doing!

Navigating through the airport was not stressful, although our burritos leaked a bit in our bag, which caused security to investigate.  Aside from that minor hiccup, we arrived at the gate with plenty of time to enjoy our lunch. The burritos were not as good as Chipotle, but again, I must admit that my senses were still "off."  And, though we may have paid a premium in Boston, but I find Chipotle's enormous burritos (which sometimes give me 2 meals) to be much less expensive.

Our quick, but adventure-filled trip to the northeast ended with a smooth flight back to Raleigh. While the plane was calm and steady, my head congestion gave me severe ear pain and pressure on the descent, which lasted a few days after the trip.  I was grateful to have Wednesday (4th of July) off to recover before the short, two-day workweek.  But, once I felt better, I wanted to get back north because of the intense 100+ degree days that are frequent in July!

I hope you've enjoyed the recap of our trip. Stay tuned for details about an exciting trip we have planned for August!  I'll be looking for suggestions on things to do and places to see and will be asking if anyone would like to join us!  Expect the post on Friday.

Where have you had your favorite cannoli?
What is your favorite restaurant in Boston?

Tour de Northeast Part 3 Burlington and New York

After spending our first day in Burlington celebrating the wedding of my college friend, and the evening reminiscing with a group of my friends and their spouses, we spent a quiet evening at the Hartwell House B and B.  My college roommate found the place and when she told me it had 2 guest rooms and the other was still available, I figured it would be fun to so relive our college days "living together."  This time, however, we had our own rooms and didn't have to share a bathroom with 20 other girls!!  

Between the heat, traveling, and being up and about all day, my cold was worse and I finally broke down and got a night-time sleep aid so I could rest.  I did feel more rested in the morning, but unfortunately, my cold didn't feel better.

After a delicious breakfast made and served by our host at the B and B, and enjoyed with my friend and her husband, Colin and I packed up the car and spent the rest of the morning and middle part of the day checking out our favorite places in Burlington and looking for new spots.  Here are a few of our old favorites:

Late night pizza and wings at Manhattan Pizza and 

one of Colin's favorite food spots - Ali Kabob's - right next to it.

Our "first date" was at the Red Onion on March 14, 2001!

Church Street is always packed on the weekends in the summer - 

too bad college months are in the winter!

Promenading on the waterfront

After walking around downtown, we took a quick driving tour through UVM's campus. In 2008, we brought our bicycles up to Burlington from NYC (this was before I started blogging) and rode through most of campus, checking out many of the renovations that were done after we graduated.  At that time, there were some beautiful new dorms on East Campus, a brand new student center, and new athletic facilities.  As we rode around, Colin found a structure on campus that looked like a design he created for one of his classes. And I found my name on a plaque in the new student center. It was quite an adventure!!

During our drive this time, we were unimpressed with another new dorm building, the Redstone Lofts, located behind Simpson Hall. The image online doesn't make it look so bad, but in person the view was hideous and not consistent with the rest of UVM's brick and green color scheme. We also found ourselves very frustrated trying to navigate out of the dorm and gym area with the car. We were turned around in circles a few times with one-way streets. I can't imagine what it is like to get around when students are around, or worse, during a hockey game! Since our time was running short, we didn't get to walk, or drive, around main campus, though I would have loved to see the updates around the student center. The building was finished when we visited in 2008, but much of the area around the building (including my former nutrition building), were under construction.

A structure on campus that resembles one Colin drew for his class

The new student center on Main Street

The plaque in the student center with my name on it!

Heading to Colin's parent's house, located just north of Albany, NY, we decided to take the ferry across Lake Champlain at Charlotte, VT.  This was a common trip for us, especially during my junior year when Colin took a year between college and law school and lived at home.  During this trip, we enjoyed the view of the mountains to the west (New York) and the mountains we were leaving behind to the west (Vermont). A rain cloud passed north of us, looking like it was headed to Burlington, and thankfully, we remained dry.  

Ferry Crossing at Charlotte, VT - looking over to New York

Before leaving Burlington, we decided to order food "to-go" from the local, sustainable restaurant The Farmhouse Tap and Grill, a new restaurant.  Our order included the local, grass fed burger and the veggie burger (their menu changes often).  Both items were very good, but our dining experience was less than optimal.  On the ferry, I had to keep the food on my lap since we didn't have a table, and the wind kept catching pieces of my meal!  

The Farmhouse burger, enjoyed on the ferry

Once on the New York side of the lake, drove about 30 minutes north to Willsboro, New York, an area where Colin's family has spent years vacationing.  In the 11 years we have been together, I've spent a few long weekends with Colin and his family in Willsboro and it's always nice to see and hear about the joyous memories of Colin's youth and make memories of our own. One year, we water skied in Willsboro Bay.  It was my first time, and I actually got up.  It was a lot of fun, but I do remember the water being pretty cold!!

As we drove up to Willsboro, we noticed how deserted the downtown area looked with the small IGA (grocery store) closed up.  We made our way to one of our usual spots, known as "the point" and enjoyed a beautiful view of the bay, mountains, and Burlington across the lake.  

Photo taken on a trip to "the point" back in August 2008

From Willsboro, Colin drove the 2.5 hours south to his parent's house. There, we were greeted by the whole family and enjoyed a nice Italian dinner, a tradition Colin refers to as "Meatball Sunday."  We spent a quiet evening with the family and I was grateful to relax.  Unfortunately, my cold did not get better as the day progressed, but the worst appeared to remain behind me.  The opportunity to rest that evening and sleep in on Monday left me feeling better for the last day of the trip.

Stay tuned as we make our way to Boston for the final leg of our tour!

What do you do when you are feeling under the weather while traveling, but have a packed itinerary?


For the UVMers who read the blog, what campus updates must we see the next time we visit?

Our 6th Anniversary - July 22, 2012

I can't believe it's been 6 years!

So grateful for every day we get to be together.

In the 11 years we have been together, we have now been in the 

same place for longer than we've done the distance thing. 

I consider this one a milestone!

Tour de Northeast Part 2 - A Wedding and College Friends

After our wonderful adventures on Block Island in Rhode Island, I was looking forward to a restful night sleep before our weekend's festivities.  The reason for our trip to the northeast was to attend my college friend's wedding near Burlington, Vermont, and we planned to drive up from RI Saturday morning.  As unfortunate luck would have it, I caught Colin's cold/flu and had a really difficult time sleeping. It left me feeling really tired and generally "out of sorts" for the rest of our trip.


Regardless of my cold, I was determined to enjoy spending time with my dearest friends - those I met my first semester of my first year away from home - who went through all the college firsts with me (though my lips are sealed about what all those firsts were about).

The 4 hour drive to Burlington was pleasant thanks to no traffic, my husband the chauffeur, riding in my parent's new Fiat 500, and a beautiful summer day!

"Our" wheels for 5 days!

A beautiful, crystal clear day in Vermont!

Arriving at Lang Barn just as my friends did, I was so excited to celebrate with them. The picturesque setting on this beautiful day was everything I had hoped we would have had for our wedding almost 6 years ago!  And as I posted on the blog back in 2010, my girlfriends and I were on track to get together in 2011, based on an every 5 year event, but we ended up having to wait until 2012 for Karri to get married!  I'm so glad she gave us a reason to all take a break from the routine of our lives and take a trip down memory lane.

Now for a recap of our day in photos...

Karri's sister and her and Brian's German Shepard make their way down the aisle.

The bride, looking stunning, is escorted by her brother.

A hot, but very beautiful setting for the nuptials. 

In true Vermont fashion, a reception in a barn.

Some choreographed country line dancing (yes, we are there on the left).

And a beautiful view!

To beat the heat, catch up with each other, and enjoy the view, we spent most of the afternoon hanging out on the back deck.

Unfortunately, we didn't get a photo with the bride and groom, 

but I love the one of us from the front, taken by the photographer!

The photographer also got a up close one of our country line dancing!  As most of you know me, I would have loved to spend more time on the dance floor, but it really was unbearably hot in the barn and, with my cold, I just could not be inside.  The country dance and a few slow songs were all I could muster, but I had lots of time to catch up on the lives of my college friends.

There was lots of reminiscing, talks of mutual friends we've been in touch with, updates on jobs, and stories of kids (there are 4 babies under the age of 3 and 2 on the way among the 3 couples!). Needless to say, there was plenty to talk about!!

To continue our time together after the wedding, we decided to get together in downtown Burlington over drinks and dinner.  At 8pm on a warm, summer Saturday night on Church Street, the only restaurant where we wouldn't have to wait was Ken's Pizza.  Still being mostly full from our delicious and abundant food at the wedding, no one seemed upset about the location. I actually have very fond memories of the Italian sub (or "grinder" as I once called it with my Rhode Island background), and decided to see if it was as good as I remembered it. The sub and Colin's goat cheese salad did not disappoint.  But, the food was only memorable because it brought me back to the days of being carefree, with little responsibility.  It's hard not to miss the best parts of those days.  

After spending the whole day together, and most of the evening, my friends and I knew it was time to say our goodbyes.  We left an open plan to go on a vacation sometime in the near future (which I know will be hard until the kids get older), and decided against "goodbye" and instead left it "until next time."  Hearing everyone's stories, I know we have so much going on in our lives, but it is nice to know you can get together with friends after 5 years and pick up where you left off last time.  I hope it won't be another 5 or 6 years before we see each other again, but I'm grateful to know that if it is that long, it won't matter.

How often do you get to see your closest friends?

How do you stay in touch if you don't see them very often?