Are you one of those with a romantic vision of Oregon – green trees, city parks bordered by rose gardens and a spirit of youth and possibilities in the air? Much of Portland really does live up to this image.
Portland makes for an ideal casual visit. Its downtown is a great for walking, with art fairs and farmer's markets through the summer. Powell's, the world's largest independent bookstore is where the Birkenstock crowd mixes with the button-down set wandering the stacks and sipping lattes in the on-site cafe.
Much of Portland's appeal arises from its proximity to the mighty Columbia River just north of the city. The second largest and most powerful river in America carves the divide that separates Washington from Oregon and makes for all sorts of water attractions, including the annual competition of windsurfers. (Not for me though; a few hours of relative quiet, canoeing a placid tributary is my idea of watery adventure.) Most important, the Columbia nourishes the farms of the Northwest that feed much of the nation.
One of the contributors to our newsletter likes to take in the river view from the Columbia Gorge Hotel, an establishment founded by a timber baron back in the days when that designation meant something other than clear-cutting of forests.
The hotel is only an hour east of Portland, and it's a great place to go on a Sunday morning for the locally famous Sunday farm breakfast—a five-course extravaganza with apple fritters (Northwest apples, of course), grilled Idaho mountain trout (from Idaho's Snake River through its confluence into the Columbia), buttermilk pancakes, and home-style baking powder biscuits. The hotel grounds and gardens encourage post-feast exploration, and you might even find a waterfall that pours into the surging Columbia.
It seems that Portland and its countryside are ripe with such discoveries, and I find I want to go back again and again. Or move there.
But I have to say that two things bug me whenever I'm there: it rains a lot – mostly of the short refreshing type, but rain, nevertheless. And secondly, there are too many people like me filling the restaurants, the shops and everywhere I want to be.
I wonder, what are the regionally classic meals and local events that draw people to your part of North America?