the beaver state

no joke, oregon is the beaver state. anyway, we woke up this morning in the happy little town of pendleton, pictured above as seen from our bed and breakfast, the riverwalk, which is at the left. our hosts were very hospitable and cooked up delicious blueberry muffins and great conversation to go along with it. interestingly, the building used to be a boarding house--the current owners have been operating their b and b for about 3 years now and really enjoy it.

our breakfast conversation had to be cut short, however, because we were going to tour the pendleton mill at 9, so off we went. as i explained before, pendleton has a special place in the hearts of our family, so we were really anticipating this visit. it was neat to see how these wool fabrics were made and to see the giant spools, which you can see part of to the right. they have these massive looms which can turn out a blanket in minutes, after being hand-threaded, which takes about 24 hours. after they are woven, a little old woman goes over the fabric with a fine-toothed comb, literally, looking for flaws. just her and these giant rolls of fabric. after that, it is usually fluffed, which involved essentially brushing them up into the wool version of an afro. then its cut, finished, etc. of course, we spent too much time and money in the store, but in our defense they had things cheaper there than you can find literally anywhere else.after leaving pendleton, we headed west on highway 84, following the columbia river the 200+ miles to portland, seeing quite of few of windfarms, like that to the left, along the way. the road was really beautiful, just following the river, which was mostly lake after lake built by dam after dam. at several points you can drive on pieces of the old highway 30, one of the first paved roads in the nation. it's on the land side of the new 84, and man, you can tell it is old: it was built in the 30s. the engineer tried to insist on things like having at least a 100 foot turning radius on the corners. the first trek of old 30 we took led us up the side of the gorge wall to rowena crest, which had a breath-taking view of the river, and was filled with stunning wildflowers. now, i'm not a huge flower person, but i do have a soft spot for wild flowers, particularly poppies, and now whatever these blue flowers are in oregon. the picture to the right is of highway 30, the one below of the columbia from the crest.











we stopped at one of the falls and took pictures in one of the fields filled with flowers. there were others too, wild sunflowers, some purple flower as well as poppies, but these blue ones were the most populous. we also stopped at a cherry farm to buy a delicious pound of cherries for the bargain price of $2.00. we got on another part of 30 a little later, which is where we saw the waterfall. this second part of 30 was more crowded than the first, so we tried to stay away from the gaggle of families and groups of teenagers to press on toward portland.
to be honest, i have been really excited about portland since day 1 of this trip. i've always wanted to go to a northwest city, and i've learned about the great city-planning and green trends in this particular one since i was in middle school. we checked into our hotel and wandered around the city a little bit (it was already getting towards late afternoon) by ourselves. mum apparently wandered toward the tradition city center, with the courthouse and large-ish square, where she saw these people having what they called a sit-in, trying to get people to just sit and meditate for a bit on these large pillows. not a definition of a sit-in that i am familiar with, but i appreciate their sentiment. and like many large cities, there was a place for people to play chess--they even had some chessboards carved in stone on these podium things. they also had these really cool statue fountains, each featuring a different animal. when we came by together after dinner of thai food at a place called typhoon, i snapped a picture of the one with seals. although, knowing what i do now, i should have gotten the beavers.

for myself, while i explored a little in the opposite direction, i mainly headed for powell's, which is the largest independently owned bookstore in the world. and it is big. founded in 1971, it has now expanded to fill up pretty much an entire city block. and it's awesome! they have it organized into 'rooms,' which share a theme--the rose room is for explorers, either literal as in travel books, or figurative as in metaphysics and religion. also neat is the fact that they sell new and used books--i picked up used copies of richard wright's autobiography 'black boy,' susan sontag's 'in america,' and drew gilpin faust's 'this republic of suffering: death and the american civil war.' mainly, though, i wandered around. the bookstore is neat, but you definitely do need the guide and map that you can pick up the door. parts of it are 3 floors, parts only 1, and another part is off by half a floor. needless to say, finding a specific section, like history, took me a while, but it was great once i did: i easily spent an hour and a half just browsing.