{"id":1422,"date":"2013-02-25T11:18:34","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T17:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/?p=1422"},"modified":"2013-02-25T17:18:53","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T23:18:53","slug":"back-to-the-grind-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/back-to-the-grind-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Back To The Grind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back from our trip. \u00a0Had to happen sometime I guess. \u00a0We had a good time, although it was spoiled rather quickly when we touched down in KC. \u00a0What a snowy mess. \u00a0Portland may not have been a beach-side resort, but it was a lot better than this. \u00a0I’ll attempt to briefly recap our week, as I realize that was a pretty weak effort on the last update. \u00a0Hey, I was typing on my iPad, give me a break. \u00a0All dates and events listed are subject to my sketchy memory.<\/p>\n

We got to Portland Saturday and proceeded to navigate to our hotel. \u00a0The driving conditions out there were OK I guess. \u00a0A little worse than KC but certainly not Chicago or LA. \u00a0I can say that next time we travel I will be taking the Garmin. \u00a0The smart phone apps are functional, I suppose, but a far cry from an actual GPS. \u00a0It got us there, at the end of the day. \u00a0(Literally… \u00a0The end of the day.)<\/p>\n

Monday we decided to tour some of the wineries in the region. \u00a0I honestly didn’t even know Oregon was a wine region; \u00a0Learn something every day. \u00a0Apparently they have a few though, so I picked out four in the nearby Willamette Valley<\/a> that mapped out nicely. \u00a0We took our time about it, not really having anything else to do for the day. \u00a0I’m sure with some research I could come up with the exact wineries we went to, but I can’t pick them out of that\u00a0formidable list right now. \u00a0That effectively used up Monday, and we wrapped up with a late dinner at Max’s Fanno Creek<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tuesday we switched to brewery tours. \u00a0If I was gonna do it over again I’d work out a side-trip to Bend, OR, where a lot of the actual breweries are located. \u00a0I like to do tours, where they can tell you all about their operation and why they produce the absolute best brews in the country. \u00a0As it happens, the majority of the places in downtown Portland are Brew Pubs<\/strong>; \u00a0Pretty much restaurants that serve said brew. \u00a0Some of them did actually brew on site, but it isn’t really the same thing. \u00a0That’s not to say they weren’t some of the best Brew Pubs I’ve been to though, they were certainly more\u00a0knowledgeable on their taps than most other places I’ve been. \u00a0They all would do a “custom flight” too. \u00a0Instead of just picking a sampler off the menu, if you would tell them what flavor profiles you like they would make some selections for you. \u00a0Probably my favorite was Lucky Lab<\/a>. \u00a0This one wasn’t on our original schedule, but was recommended by a guy at another spot. \u00a0The kid there put some serious thought into our flight, it was like an interview process. \u00a0I liked the place so much I bought my official vacation\u00a0souvenir from them, a nice cycling jersey.<\/p>\n

Wednesday we decided to drive down to the coast. \u00a0Driving tours are far from my favorite vacation option, but it was OK. We stopped at Tillamook Cheese<\/a> for a while, drove Highway 101 for a bit, stopped at some beaches along the way, all the good touristy stuff. \u00a0It was nice as drives go… But still a drive. \u00a0I of course would later regret not stopping at a few other places we saw, but I was getting antsy and decided it was time to head back. \u00a0I even skipped the fish hatchery; \u00a0I like those for whatever reason. \u00a0Oh well, what can you do. \u00a0There were a lot of hazelnut farms too. \u00a0I’m not sure why you would want to look around a hazelnut farm, but then I’m not sure why you wouldn’t either.<\/p>\n

Thursday we were out of gas for the most part. \u00a0Done. \u00a0Finished. \u00a0We hung around the hotel, then we did make it out for a nice dinner. \u00a0We went to Jake’s Famous Crawfish<\/a>, which was recommended by several people. \u00a0It didn’t really work out as planned, but we had fun. \u00a0Our original plan was to work our way through all the appetizers, so we could get a little taste of everything. \u00a0Turned out that after a 1\/2 dozen oysters and a bowl of seafood gumbo, we were so stuffed we couldn’t even think about food. \u00a0And besides that, as is too often the case, we ended up sitting next to That Guy, who while entertaining for a short time eventually wore us out. \u00a0I can’t adequately describe him here. \u00a0Next time you see Donette ask her about him, she does a good imitation. \u00a0He was in some kind of bizarre loop. \u00a0He’d just pull out a random name (with no prompting what-so-ever,) and say for instance: \u00a0“Ahhhhhhh yeah, Jimi Hendrix, I remember him. \u00a0One time I asked him (insert odd nonsensical question) and do you know what he said?” \u00a0Then he would break into a spirited air-guitar and sing. \u00a0Over and over and over. \u00a0My favorite line of the night, though, was probably the only thing he said that strayed from this format. \u00a0There were some kids between him and us, and they were admittedly rather outrageously dressed. \u00a0They were, however, nice enough and minding their own business. \u00a0As a matter of fact I greatly appreciated their\u00a0presence because he was focused on them for a while. \u00a0He finally wore them out though, and as soon as they left he moved over by us, ugh. \u00a0The first thing he says is “Man, they were weird huh?” \u00a0Uhhhhh, yeah.<\/p>\n

All-in-all a good trip. \u00a0Got a little feel for the place, we’ll know to make a few little tweaks should we make it out that way again. \u00a0We got home Friday night and have been shoveling ever since. \u00a0Like I said, all dates and times above are subject to my horrible memory. \u00a0As I quickly proof this, I already noticed I missed Sunday. \u00a0That means everything could be off by a day, or I totally forgot about something already. \u00a0Sigh, it ain’t easy getting old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back from our trip. \u00a0Had to happen sometime I guess. \u00a0We had a good time, although it was spoiled rather quickly when we touched down in KC. \u00a0What a snowy mess. \u00a0Portland may not have been a beach-side resort, but it was a lot better than this. \u00a0I’ll attempt to briefly recap our week, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1426,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions\/1426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}