Day 5

Today, we left Portland (sad), but also saw lots of pretty stuff and cute people!  Before we left Portland, we stopped at Whole Foods in NW to stock up on more snacks.  It was great being in a Whole Foods, and NW was interesting...very different part of Portland.  I had heard that it was more bourgeois and expensive, and it definitely proved itself to be such!  Anthropologie and Whole Foods -- always proof that you are in a place where people have money.

Then we drove through Mount Rainier National Park in Washington, which was beautiful!  Totally snowy, but like, 75 degrees, which means I was in a sundress and flip flops playing in the snow.  Which, of course, means that there are pictures as proof, but I am too lazy to attach those, so...check out Facebook!

After Mount Rainier, we drove to Buckley, Washington, which is an hour southeast of Seattle.  Buckley is a little farmy town where Kiyoko's great uncle and his wife live.  Generalization of the day: old, Japanese people are awesome.  They were really sweet and invited over their Japanese neighbors (a woman, her husband, and her 6 year old son named Kazumichi).  The neighbor is vegetarian, and we could eat everything she made!  Score!  So nice when that happens.  Kazumichi was a blast, and entertained me and Kiyoko for hours.  Kazumichi and his parents even played us a little violin concert! Yay, Japan!

We stayed in a guest room in an old person house, so it smelled like mothballs, which was really comforting.  All my grandparents have been dead for awhile, so it was sweet and nostalgic staying in a "grandparently" house.

Tomorrow, we are Canada bound!

Day 4

Full day in Portland -- hurray!  I’m definitely in love with this city.  Well, maybe I’m not in love with it yet, but I definitely have a big old crush on it.  I can’t wait to find out if it feels the same!

This morning, Kiyoko and I went back to NE to take some yoga.  We were cooped up in the car the day before, and wanted to move around a bit!  We stopped in at Back to Eden Bakery (again) for some small vegan treats pre-yoga, and then went to The People’s Yoga for a noon flow.  It was nice to move around, and the studio space was very nice and open.  The whole thing felt VERY Portland.  Then we stopped into a couple of vintage stores and I got a couple of dresses.  Still, very Portland!  We headed Downtown for lunch/donuts, and stopped at this array of food trucks, all in one lot.  There were maybe...10-15 food trucks in this one spot, and many vegetarian options!  We settled on Sonny Bowl, a nice, healthy, simple bowl/salad, all-vegan truck.  We took our bowls/salads to Waterfront Park, which was, you guessed it, a park on the water.  Basically just grass and benches overlooking the river and the drawbridge.  There were lots of runners, bikers, dogs, people reading books -- you know, super cool stuff like that.  It felt like Chicago, or maybe like any city with a waterfront.  It was really freaking hot!  Like, 85 degrees!  In Portland!  Apparently, summer can be like that here.  It’s just strange after everyone being like, “OMG you wanna move to Portland?  You’ll drown in rain!!!!!”  

Anyway, then we went to Voodoo Donut -- my long-awaited stop for the past three years.  Only at Voodoo have I had a vegan donut that tasted like an actual donut, not a vegan cake-y thing.  We stood in line for about 15 minutes in the blazing sun, but I would dodge lightning bolts for these things, so it was just fine!  I got a CREAM-FILLED CHOCOLATE DONUT AND THEN I JIZZED IN MY PANTS.  Actually, no.  Not yet.  I controlled myself a half of a block while we walked to Stumptown, a famous coffee shop/distributer round these parts.  We got lattes from the cute barista, and I ate my donut whilst groaning inappropriately.  I mean...honestly.  I just. Can’t even....no words.

Then we tried to find Forest Park and failed.  There’s only one road leading into it, and we missed it.  Oh well.  We headed back to Beaverton to meet up with Hannah Jackson, my friend from New Zealand (who is really my friend from Portland, who I met in New Zealand).  Kiyoko and I went to Cedar Hills Crossing, a mall in the ‘burbs, and waited for Hannah at Powell’s Books (not to be confused with the even COOLER Powell’s City of Books, but still -- very cool!).  Hannah and I went to Panera to catch up (she ate, I didn’t).  Then Kiyoko and I headed back to Beaverton to shower and get ready for our wild night on the town!

So, we went to dinner at a pizza place with a vegan menu in SE called Sizzle Pie.  We got a pizza that had cilantro-pepitas pesto, red sauce, not-a-ricotta, artichokes, kalamatas, and mushrooms.  It was yummy.  Not THE best vegan pizza I’ve had, but still very good.  

Then we met up with Clark, his cousin, Molly, her boyfriend and friend at an all-vegan bar called The Sweet Hereafter, also in SE.  We didn’t eat anything because we had just eaten, but we DID drink.  My former co-worker from Farm Sanctuary, Zoe, showed up with her friend Cherie, and we had a barrel of fun.  Zoe and Cherie are both short-haired, vegan, bad-ass chicks.  Zoe is a bartender at a dog hotel (which sounds like something straight out of “Girls”), and Cherie is a bus driver.  Quirky-as!  We went to another bar called Dig a Pony and I drank a little more, and then we went home.  SE is definitely a little hipper, grittier, and full of cool hipster bars full of pretty people.  I felt like I was the right kind of person at the right kind of age here, unlike how I feel at a bar in SLO.  I think being single in this city would be VERY fun.  Dudes and shit.  And ladeeeez, too.  

Went home, went to sleep.  See you next week, Portland.  I’m totally smitten.

Day 3

Today, I could write a love letter to Oregon.  So I think I will.

We started the day in Ashland (Talent, Oregon, to be exact) and got ready to head out for a long day of driving and beauty!  We stopped at the co-op in Ashland and grabbed some yummy vegan foods (prepared delis with well-marked salads and hot dishes as VEGAN are so appreciated).  I even got a vegan donut, which was good, but just a sad little prelude to the epic bingefest that will occur at Voodoo Donuts in Portland.  Then, we said goodbye to Ashland, which was a really cute and charming city.  It reminded me so much of Ithaca, New York -- eerily so.  I wonder if the West Coast and East Coast cities have any idea that they are little twinsy city sisters.  

Then we ventured out to Crater Lake National Park.  It was about a 2 and a half hour drive northeast, through pretty trees (God, Oregon, ENOUGH with the trees already!) and finally into the national forest and park.  We were up pretty high, and the temperature drop was radical.  There was snow on the ground!  Yesterday morning we were in Yuba City, which is like a sauna, and today, there was snow on the ground!  WTF, weather?!  WTF, elevation?!  Anyway, Crater Lake was like, shit-your-pants beautiful.  Like, majestic volcano dinosaur magic lake status.  I’m not sure what that means, but it’s basically just a long string of adjectives that came to my head to describe the lake.  We tromped around and took lots of pictures and like, sang some worship songs (this is a lie.  I am not religious, but if I were to fall in love with Jesus, it would likely happen here.), and posted a bunch of shit on Instagram and Facebook.  Turns out it’s the deepest lake in the U.S., and it was also crazy blue.  And the whole thing just smelled like awesome Christmas.  Seriously, Oregon, you have an abundance of trees, we get it.  

What followed was a beautiful, but long drive to Portland.  Lots of little po-dunk towns and trees (duh).  Observation: Only saw two cops in Oregon so far.  One was a sheriff car in one of said po-dunk towns, and another had a truck pulled over on the highway.  Dude, if this were California, we would have seen approximately a zillion cop cars!  Fuck da police, California!  California has as many cop cars as Oregon has trees!

Portland = awesome already.  Ate some delicious vegan burritos from a Mexican food truck in the NE neighborhood (Alberta to be exact).  We met up with Clark, who is on his mobile home pilgrimage, and he ate burritos with us.  Then we ate soft serve ice cream (with vegan caramel sauce) from an all vegan bakery called Back to Eden Bakery down the street.  Oh Portland, I cannot live in you, for you will make me morbidly obese!  But seriously, I am in a place with all vegan bakeries and a vegan menu at a Mexican food truck?  I am spazzing out and trying to act like a bear in the Winter storing up for hibernation.  I am still extraordinarily full.  The three of us stood on a street corner for awhile and then Michelle Sager (high school and childhood friend) came by and WE talked on the corner for a while.  She lives in that neighborhood and was wandering around, and it was really nice to catch up.  She gave us some bar/neighborhood/yoga recommendations for tomorrow and next week’s Portland experience.  Tomorrow we’ll eat donuts and do yoga (normal) and do other lots of cool stuff.

And oh yeah, we’re staying in Beaverton, which is a suburb about a half hour southwest of Portland with Mary Kay’s friend Beate and her family.  It is nice to stay in houses!  

So tired.  Goodnight, blog.

Road Trip: Days 1 and 2

I am not sure which day to count as Day 1 because traveling from SLO to Yuba City just doesn’t feel like the beginning of a road trip to me -- it feels like going home.  I suppose I’ll count Yuba City, though, since that was the venture out of SLO!  

Kiyoko and I got to Yuba City around 6:15pm, and it happened to be Father’s Day, so we “took my dad out” to Sopa Thai, which was closed.  We ended up at New Earth Market, Yuba City’s fresh and surprisingly-impressive new-ish health food market, and ate tamales and salads and soups from their prepared food area.  Pretty yummy.  Then we watched hours of TV (having no internet and cable means things like On Demand are so VERY exciting to me).  We watched fun things, like “True Life: I’m a Sugar Baby,” and “Dance Moms.”  Hurray TV!  Hurray warm, Yuba City summer nights, which make me feel simultaneously like an anxious and wistful small child, and a horny, wistful teenager.  Always wistful.  Always smells like rotting peaches.  Great stars, warm breezes -- if only Yuba City always had this charm!  

This morning we left Yuba City after picking up my car from the Toyota Dealership, that my nice daddy took in at 7:30, paid for, and gassed up for me!  Yay, Daddy!  Then, we dropped the car off, stopped at the bank, got a Cookie Tree VEGAN cookie, picked up some snick-snacks at New Earth (twice in 24 hours, bitches), and went on our merry way.  Isn’t this a truly exciting post so far, full of fun things like oil changes and banks and cookies?  No.  Sorry.

We got up in the truly hella up-there Northern California (there is state above San Francisco, SoCal narcissists!).  Everything up until Redding is dry and farmy and full of little towns called “Dairyville” and things like that.  Then, BAM!  Mountains and forests and majestic Mount Shasta!  Things got real pretty, real fast.  Then we were in Oregon, and spent the afternoon and evening in Ashland, which was just as cute as I remembered it from three years and ten years ago.  We walked around and checked out some little boutiques.  Kiyoko bought a fedora that fit her giant head, and we just spent the day going in little shops and reading menus from outside of cafes.  We went into Lithia Park, which is big and full of fairies (the literal kind, not gay men -- come on, guys, I’m more PC than that!).  But really, for a town that centers around Shakespeare, they really have the perfect place to make you feel like Puck is hiding behind a pretty tree or in a swampy pond.  This place was way cute, with benches and young dads pushing adorable little girls on swings, and college-age kids playing frisbee.  We even met a couple that met in person eight days ago who met on Instagram.  Yeah, that made even ME feel old.  How does that even...?  Anyway, she sounded like Jennifer Tilly, so we’ll see how long THAT lasts.  

We had dinner at Grilla Bites, a vegan-friendly small chain that I have been to in Chico.  I had a fake BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger, a totally Amy-customized meal (I like to pretend that I’m an obese southern man as much as possible, even though I’m vegan).  It was yummy.  And we had Beegan truffly-caramel things there.  We then saw the movie “Bully,” a documentary about kids who have been bullied, and the measures schools are taking to protect kids from bullies (spoiler alert -- they ain’t doing SHIT about it).  It was super sad and empowering as a future/current teacher and future/(current?!) parent.  Kids are fucking cruel.  Thanks for homeschooling me, Mommy and Daddy!  You saved me from getting STRANGLED and threatened and SAT ON on the school bus!  Jesus.  

Anyway, then we went to Darek Riley’s house in Talent, Oregon.  Haven’t seen the kid in years, and he is all skinny and grown up and owns a really cute house and has a pretty girlfriend named Linnea, so that’s all pretty cool.  Go, Darek!  We talked theatre and movies and TV shows and went to bed.  Well, not really.  I went to finish Mindy Kaling’s book while Kiyoko does Yin Yoga with headphones in and now I’m blogging.  

So far, so good!

P.S. I’ve already seen two LIVE deer, so this trip is already a success.