Ernie Finishes Up Portland

It was Ernie's last day of his first road trip and so we wanted to make the most of it.

I don't think Ernie had ever been up in the big boy bed before. He thought it was pretty cool.

We hit a couple few more McMenamins locations before we said goodbye to Derek and Gabby.

McMenamins Rams Head didn't have a patio per se but just decided the street belongs to them now and put furniture in it. I appreciate the gumption.

McMenamins Tavern and Pool is special to me because I visited here way back in 2007. I had a job right out of college traveling the country installing servers and I was sent out to Portland.

McMenamins 23rd Ave Bottle Shop had lots of fun weird stuff. I took a few bottles home.

Portland is kind of like if everyone in Seattle quit their jobs and started doing drugs. So I asked myself: where do Portlanders that are not hooked on meth live and conduct their business? We attempted to find out. We found a shady spot for a blanket in Tanner Creek Park in West Linn, south of Portland.

Ernie got me good. He was like "come closer I want to whisper something to you."

Next thing I know he socks me in the face.

I'll get you for this.

Ernie likes the wind and enjoys sticking his tongue out at it for the feels. Or to taste it, I don't know.

A fun fact that you didn't know you needed to know is that the 15.5 ton Willamette Meteorite is the largest ever found in the United States. Wow guys.

Actually more exciting and useful than the size of the local space rocks is that Willamette had public drinking fountains that dispensed sparkling water. That's fancy as hell right there.

This Willamette Garage thing was super cool as well. It was a permanent area for food trucks to congregate and they had live music as well.

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.