Keep Portland Weird

“Better late than never,” is a perfect start to this post, knowing that I probably should’ve written it way sooner. I guess you could consider finally having the time to complete things on your to do list a small, if still mildly annoying perk of a quarantine that seems to have no end in sight. Having been in San Francisco for close to three months now, away from Portland and the cool Pacific Northwest weather, I’m definitely missing the city.

My first interaction with Portland began last summer when my roommate and I visited a friend who was in the city for a long weekend. We were nearing the end of our ICU assignment and were beginning to look for our next place to call home. Time and again people had recommended Portland to us, so we took the weekend trip as an opportunity to see what the city was all about.

Driving into the city on a warm, mid-July afternoon, we could tell it was different from any other city we’d visited before. For one, the layout of the roads made no sense, a good number of stop signs we passed plastered with Bernie bumper stickers. There were roundabouts maybe no larger than five feet wide randomly placed in the middle of small neighborhoods, and I distinctly remember passing a bicyclist riding one of those old school bikes with a front wheel taller than the guy who was riding it. 

Downtown Portland had a trolley that made stops all throughout the city, and the restaurants included everything from deep dish Chicago style pizza to delicious Vietnamese, the gray-haired woman serving pho behind the counter easily over eighty years old, a white smile breaking through the wrinkles of her face as she handed us our food.

We’d also heard that three weeks previous there had been a naked bike ride in the city, an annual tradition where thousands of Portlanders bike through the streets completely, 100% birthday suit naked. And for those of you wondering, it’ll take more than a worldwide pandemic to keep this cherished tradition from occurring again this year. The City of Portland is encouraging people to do the same as they always have come the date of the ride, just on their own, all while socially distancing.

We likewise realized that the city is fairly spread out, divided into two halves by the Willamette river, the downtown space on the west side, the larger, more residential area to the east. From Revolution Hall, a small rooftop bar we had drinks at later that first afternoon, on one side you could see the Portland cityscape, and on the other was Mount Hood in the distance, still snow capped in the mid-summer heat, a solitary mountain peak jutting up from the jade, effervescently green horizon.

“Keep Portland weird” isn’t a phrase that Portland’s adopted as its mantra simply because it’s catchy. It honestly couldn't be a more authentic way of describing the city and the people who live there.

Because it’s definitely a weird city, but only in the best of ways.

And while it may have been one of the more eccentric places I’ve come to live in so far, it also came to snatch a piece of my heart that I hadn’t thought it would. It’s hard not to fall in love with trails and mountains to hike, a beautiful coastline within two hours drive, the nicest people you could ever meet, and a food and brewery scene unmatched by anywhere else.

So I thought I’d take a second to talk about some of my favorite things about the weirdest city of them all, Portland, Oregon. While none of what I can write will genuinely describe the great memories Portland left me with and how much I’ve already grown to miss it, I’d love for this post to inspire those of you who have always considered visiting it yourselves. If you get the chance to see it in person, I can’t help but think you’ll feel the same.

Mount Hood National Forest

I went to Mount Hood a fair number of times throughout my six months in Portland, each time finding some new part of it that left me amazed in the way that only nature can. It’s one of those amazing national parks that has opportunities for you to get outside all 365 days a year, not just during the warm summer months.

In October, just before the mountain closed for skiing and snowboarding, my parents visited with the intention of getting some decent hiking in. My dad ended up picking a doozy of a trail, Coopers Spur, a ten mile trail which zig-zagged up the north side of the mountain to an elevation of around eight thousand feet. The day we hiked the trail was a crystal clear, baby blue sky of a day, leaving us with astounding views of a number of other mountains, all jutting out of the earth like tanned, snow-capped fingers. Mount Rainier, Mount Saint Helens, and Mount Adams were all in the distance, close enough that it felt like they were sisters of Mount Hood, each waving through the clear blue sky to their mountain sibling. We ate our lunch on the snow packed trail, the peak of Mount Hood sitting just a couple thousand feet above us, cool mountain air rushing past us as gray jays tried to snag bits of our trail mix.

And while the weather had been amazing the first four months I had been in the city, it’s true what they say about the constant rain that comes to the PNW during the winter months. Some months I could count on one hand the number of days I saw sunlight, and some weeks the rain fell constantly, for what felt like weeks at a time. As a reprieve from all of the gray and gloominess, we strapped our skis on and took off to the same trails which we had hiked up only months before. Being able to get outside to ski above the clouds - the only place we could seem to find the sunshine - was a great way to the beat the winter blues.

The Coast

Just as I was painfully unaware of the amazing hiking opportunities that were so close to Portland, I also didn’t realize how close it was to the coast, particularly to Cannon Beach and Ecola State Park. These weren’t just any coastlines, either. These were the coasts you always see in pictures, rugged cliff faces jutting out of the ocean, white-washed tree trunks splayed out on the shoreline, their roots gnarled and tangled together with entire spans of beach to yourself.

I had gone to Cannon Beach on several occasions, one of which was with a group of friends just as fall was hitting peak season, the weather turning more crisp by the day. We’d hiked through Ecola State Park in the morning, enjoying the panoramic views of the coast and the brisk, salt-scented air. We ended the day at Cannon, enjoying our lunch of cheese and wine before we all sprinted into the ocean, the cold Pacific air whipping around us as we raced towards the tide, our breaths catching in our chests as the frigid water engulfed us.

As my head bobbed out of the water, I noticed the setting sun on the horizon, the sky mixing into all different colors around it, like an artist had thrown his pallet of paint against the Pacific sky, creating his own little abstract masterpiece.

It was one of many moments where I couldn’t believe the place I was living in.

Breweries and Food

While I had thought before moving out west that DC had an amazing food scene (which it does), Portland gave it a run for its money, though Portland’s brewery scene has DC’s beat, without question.

There were a few restaurants that I went to, all of which I’d highly recommend to anyone visiting the city. For a good dive bar with some of the best fried chicken you’ll ever eat (a hard bar to surpass), give C Bar a shot. It was right around the corner from my place, which was both convenient and dangerous, as I found myself there multiple times a week, either for said fried chicken or for a couple of beers instead.

Afuri was by far my favorite sit-down restaurant, providing some of the best ramen and cocktails I’ve ever had, all without breaking the bank. If this piques your interest, make sure you put in a reservation a few days ahead of time. The wait to get in can be absurd.

For those of you who love breakfast food as much as I do, a favorite breakfast joint of mine was in the northern part of the city, called Gravy. Without question, it’ll leave you in a comatose state of breakfast-induced happiness. As the name suggests, their biscuits and gravy were incredible, and the portion sizes mammoth. 

And for you kindred spirits who can’t pass up a good brewery, an absolute must on your Portland to-do list isn’t actually in Portland, despite the myriad brewery options in the city. Travel a few hours south to Bend, a city nestled in the mountains, the largest peaks surrounding it called the Three Sisters. Bend is a great city to travel to year-round, especially in the winters to ski. Yet no matter when you go, you can always count on some truly incredible breweries, one of which is Crux Fermentation Project. Their beer was delicious enough that I actually had a couple of six packs shipped to San Francisco for me to enjoy. A little quarantine pick-me-up and a nice little treat from a state that I’ve really grown to miss.

The Weather

I can’t really say that it was only Portland whose weather I came to love. Really, it was the entire PNW. We had spent the summer in Tacoma, Washington, so we’d already encountered the daily humidity-free, mid-70’s, full sunshine weather that we grew to love. It came to be a tradition of ours to sit out on the back porch in Tacoma, cracked and faded lawn chairs beneath us, cold IPA’s in hand as we enjoyed the the warm sun above us, the cool breeze around us. Moving to Portland, that same amazing weather didn’t change a bit. In fact, by the time fall came around, the weather had gotten even better, the leaves changing colors all around us, rivaling even the New England fall scenery I experienced on a road trip a few years back. It was never hot enough to make you not want to go outside, and there was always some sort of sunshine to keep you outside for entire afternoons at a time. With the amount of hiking I did throughout the summer and fall, the weather was especially welcome on long hikes, never leaving you drenched in sweat or feeling overheated. The evenings sometimes required a light jacket or sweatshirt if you were out and about.

So needless to say, the perfect weather.

Distance certainly makes the heart grow fonder, and the same couldn’t be more true about my time away from Portland. Couple that with being quarantined and stuck inside for weeks on end, I’ve definitely been missing my Oregon home. While this travel nursing adventure is getting me out to parts of the country I’ve never seen before, it’s also been showing me what it is that I eventually want to live close to when that day comes to finally to “settle down.” Portland definitely set the bar high: Mountains, never-ending outdoor adventures, and weather which you can’t beat.

It doesn’t get much better than that.