McMenamins and Other Portland Establishments

We woke up and got ready in our Portland hotel and then started to show Ernie all of the best sites that the city had to offer. Just kidding, we drove him to Troutdale, Oregon to get a bunch of McMenamins passport stamps.

McMenamins Edgefield was like passport stamp heaven because they had so much going on. There are a few stamps for things like "tour a winery" that there are only a select few places to earn, so this was a good opportunity to knock out some of the hard ones.

Derek and Gabby were here in Portland on their baby moon which was fun.

They brought their dog Cora along with them. There's actually a "have a beer with a dog" stamp that I was excited to earn with this awkwardly framed photo. 

Headed back to the hotel for a refresher.

We were hanging out on the patio of McMenamins White Eagle Saloon & Hotel, and Lydia walked up to the bar to get some food and drink for us. They asked her for the cover charge, as a band was about to start playing. We viewed this as pretty ridiculous since we were seated outside and would not be able to see the band, so we left. We'd already obtained the location's stamp so the fact that they were being weird was just as well.

McMenamins St. Johns Theater & Pub was much more welcoming so we set up shop there instead.

My dude's potential eye color is a fun remaining mystery. He's definitely getting blue!

The girls and babies/fetuses all went to bed and Derek and I hit a couple bars to celebrate the end of his social life.

The Green Room was a pretty classy joint with a good whiskey selection. The exposed green glazed brick also indicated that they were not liars which I took note of. 

I picked an Oregon thing.

This was an:

"Ignorance is Bliss

(Riff on the negroni, 1919)

banhez mezcal, luxardo bitter bianco, cocchi americano, tiki bitters"

Teardrop Lounge was not playing around with their drink menu. There was a friggin Powerpoint presentation in there.

A fun thing about this bar is that they play weird old movies on the wall. It took us some searching to figure out what the heck we were looking at but it seemed to be "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad". It was squarely in "so weird and bad it's good" territory.

After we'd hung out here a while I realized I've actually been here before with Lydia. Coincidentally on the same day we bought our passports and began this insane quest in the first place.

The Salty Denizens of Salem

We continued our McMenamins passport quest to apparently go to every single last friggin bar and grill in Oregon.

I believe we were planning on going to Boon's Treasury in Salem, OR initially but there was some sort of kerfuffle. I think maybe their hours stated that they should be open, but we tried to go in and they said to come back later because they were understaffed. I want to say I asked for a stamp at that point and they said no. So at this point I was mad at them. We did come back later for the stamp but we did not buy anything from them.

Well since we were already in Salem we killed the necessary time by checking out the state capitol building's exterior grounds.

They have one of those budget-looking capitol buildings that doesn't have a dome. Sad.

They apparently had a respectable-looking capitol that burned down in 1935.

They do have a giant golden hatchet man which recovers some of the lost points.

McMenamins Thompson Brewery & Public House was also in Salem and the workers there weren't jerks so things went smoothly. It's been interesting ordering the same southwest salad over and over at the same restaurant chain and seeing the still pretty considerable variation in quality. Salad I think is hard because you need such fresh ingredients.

We hit McMenamins Lighthouse Brewpub in Lincoln City, OR and ate my passport-earned free "Cannonball O' Chowder: our freshly made clam chowder in a toasty sourdough bread bowl".