Day 34 - Another great city named Portland

We visited Portland, Maine on last year's road trip to Nova Scotia and loved it.  Today we visited Portland, Oregon and loved it too.  It has great architecture, lots of green spaces, plentiful good street art, low parking rates, Tesla taxis and there are city parking spaces with chargers!  We also could afford to eat lunch at the place that was rated #1 in the city on Trip Advisor.  It wasn’t cheap but it was great food.

While Portland is great some of the suburbs don't sound like where you would like to admit you were from.  They even lowered the speed limit here. 

A Tesla Taxi

We parked and plugged Hobson in then set out for lunch.  After eating our fill and drinking too much water and in Larry’s case iced tea we set out to see the city especially the Japanese Gardens in Washington Park.  On the mile and a half walk we found lots of unexpected things and a number of restrooms.  We won’t talk about the restrooms but there were some great churches including the United Church of Christ seen below that even had an art gallery on the way to the restrooms.  We then stumbled onto Providence Park where the Portland Timber MLS team plays. 

We finally made it to the Japanese Garden which was very nice but we will probably not be able to duplicate back in Wrentham.  We also wandered through the American Rose Test garden with an amazing array of roses in all sizes, shapes and colors.  In the end we took almost as many pictures in Portland as at Crater Lake.

Portlandia - Reputed to be the second largest bronze sculpture in the US.

A rose if you couldn't guess

There were several snow covered peaks on the way into Portland which added to the scenery for the day and our GPS took us on a 12 mile side trip through some narrow roads surrounded by woods and with occasional great views of Mt. Hood.  So why did we follow the GPS through hill and dale only to end up on the same road just outside of Sandy?  Mostly because all the roads and towns disappeared from our screen within a few minutes of us setting out on the day's ride.  We called Tesla service in Seattle and they told us the software update that we had been ignoring would fix it.  We had not done it since the car is not operable during updates so we thought it would be best to wait until we got home.  We did it while we toured Portland and all is well again.

Mountain view leaving Portland

Mountain view entering Seattle

On the way into Seattle we were on the Interstate but were still treated with some good views when not blocked by trees or tractor-trailers of Mount Rainer on the right and a sunset on the left.  The snow on the mountain reflected the pink of the sunset.  Good thing Hobson was not as distracted as Larry was in the driver's seat.

Regular Features 

States involved: After a long drought for the second day in a row we added as state.  This time it is Washington.

Charging

Sandy OR  - This was an insurance stop in case we could not find a charger in Portland  At another Fred Meyers monster store/  This time there was a gas station attached which we borrowed the squeegee from to do the windows.

Electric Avenue, Portland – The street name is really Salmon Street but there is a whole 1/3 of a block dedicated to pay on street parking with free chargers.  This was wonderful.

Hobson on Electric Avienue

Centralia, WA – This was also our dinner stop.  This is the first supercharger ever with buckets and squeegees. The windows are sparkling today.

Coolest car of the Day – This ’57 Ford wagon would have been perfect with the original large hubcaps which were quite attractive that year.  While station wagons were common in those days few survived the rigors of hauling kids and stuff around so it is always fun to see one.

Church of the Day - There are so many trees in Portland that it is impossible to get a picture of any building in its entirety so here is just one of the stained glass window arches of the UCC church.

Song of the Day: Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant – Michelle thought of this immediately when she heard where we were headed in Portland

Coolest Thing of the Day – Larry – The vibe of Portland

Gotta love a place with a sense of humor

Coolest Thing of the Day - Michelle – The Japanese Garden