Oregon Coast Trip - Days 3 & 4 - Portland

Our destination after finishing in the Columbia River Gorge was to pick up lunch at Jack in the Box. We knew that the dining room would not be open, so we also had to find somewhere to eat the food. I had hoped to find a Jack in the Box close to the freeway, but was unsuccessful. So then I tried to find one close to our Hotel. That put us right in the middle of downtown Portland. As our GPS was directing us, we hit traffic. Traffic that was not moving, at all. We were trying to make a right turn, but the cars on that street were not moving. So I climbed out of the car and peeked around the corner of the building and discovered a railroad crossing with a very, VERY slow moving train on it...a really long train. So we quickly changed our plan and looked up Voodoo Donuts instead. We knew we wanted to get some for the kids, so that became our new lunch plan. 

The line was about a 15 minute wait, but the kids said it was worth it.

We carried our donuts through a street market and ended up in a green space park on the river. There were a lot of people around us doing the same thing-eating their voodoo donuts in the park.

We got about 20 donuts and ended up eating them for the next 3 days. When we checked into our hotel, we discovered that we had to reserve the swimming pool and the only good time slot left was 9 pm. So we headed to a park so the kids could play while Alyssa got her tennis time. The courts were awful, and there were a lot of weird people around.  Oh, and it was really HOT. We had planned to eat dinner at a restaurant right on the river. But as we walked along the river, we soon discovered that we would need to make a new plan. The restaurants were either not family friendly, too expensive, or full. We headed back to our hotel and picked up dinner at the Jack in the Box that was ACROSS THE STREET FROM OUR HOTEL. Yes, after the trouble we had locating one for lunch, there happened to be one right next to our hotel. We enjoyed the private pool that night.

The next morning, we had another employee served breakfast. We headed for Washington Park that morning. It was packed. We were going to try the Japanese Gardens, but discovered that they cost money to enter and you had to have a reservation. So Danny dropped us off at the Rose Gardens and he drove a mile down the hill to park and then walked back to us. The gardens were pretty.

Since it was Sunday morning, we sat down and talked a little bit about what gospel messages we could see in the beauty around us. Danny was the only one that listened in on our home ward Sacrament meeting. The timing was really bad, so he listened through headphones as we walked the gardens. I had wanted to see more of Washington park, but the crowds took the fun away and we decided to head on to Pacific City, where we would be staying for the next 3 nights.