Stop and Smell the Roses

      Every town has its "must see" things. The things that no self respecting tourist would miss. Things that a town might even be famous for, but sometimes, when we actually live in the town, we put off visiting those things. Last week I got to play tourist in my own town. My mom was visiting from California, so I gave her the nickle tour of Portland.

     Portland is known as "The City of Roses", and we have a large and famous rose garden. Despite the fact that I am a floral designer, I had never been there. I decided it was time for me to visit, so this was the first stop on our  Portland tour. The Rose Garden is HUGE! 10,000 plantings of 500 varieties of roses grow on a terraced hillside overlooking Portland. What a beautiful place to wander around and smell the roses.

    The Rose Garden also has a  Rose Store. If it looks like a rose, smells like a rose, or has a picture of a rose on it, you can find it at the Rose Store. The only thing you can't buy there is a real rose. No rose bushes or fresh cut roses for sale. Oh, and the penalty for cutting or harming roses in the garden: $500. (...or was it more? I can't remember.)

     Near the Rose Garden is the Japanese Garden. We walked up the hill to the gate, but we didn't want to pay to go inside and see it. We can do that next time. I did take a picture over the fence, though. 

                 



Lush and lovely looking Japanese Garden

                                                                                  
     Leaving the Rose Garden area, we drove past some beautiful hillside homes, and made our way up to Portland's most famous home, the Pittock Mansion.

     The Pittock Mansion was built in the early 1900's by Henry and Georgiana Pittock. Henry was the owner of The Oregonian, newspaper.

    

  The mansion sits up on a hill with a spectacular view of Portland and Mt. Hood. Mt. Hood is not visible in my pictures, due to all the haze from wildfires in the Oregon Cascades.



My mom having lunch with the best view in town.
                                                                                                                       





    

As far back as I can remember, my mom has enjoyed looking inside houses. It shouldn't have been any surprise to me when her curiosity to see what was inside this house was much stronger than her curiosity to see what was inside the Japanese Garden, and she paid for us to go inside and have a look around. Marble staircases, intricate wood floor patterns, and fancy moldings. A very beautiful and interesting tour.

     We spent the rest of the afternoon in downtown Portland, poking around in stores and looking at the local oddballs. We took a quick peek inside the "Elephants Delicatessen", where we ogled all the fancy meats, cheeses, and desserts. They had 19 different kinds of salami! I just had to take this picture. Yumm!

    

We saw quite a bit of Portland. I think we covered most of the "must sees". I can't believe it took me this long to see the Rose Garden. I will have to get back there before winter comes and the roses are all gone until next spring.

      

Getting Back to You...

     In an earlier post, I said I thought some old western movies were filmed at Smith Rock, but I'd have to get back to you on that. I looked it up, and here is what I found:

 Much of the 1994 film adaptation of the 1976 book Even Cowgirls Get The Blues was filmed within view of Smith Rock. Partial filming for the 1997 feature The Postman took place on location, while it additionally appeared in Swordfish in following years. Several westerns have been filmed here, including the John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn film Rooster Cogburn. The Rockhard building at the park entrance was built as a movie set for this film, portrayed as "Kates Saloon".

Pretty impressive. Having just watched the remake of "Rooster Cogburn", I think this is a good time to add the original to our Netflix list!

Anyone visiting Oregon, really should plan to spend a day at Smith Rock. It's beautiful! I never get tired of going there, and I'm an eager tour guide! (Even the worst photographer can't take a bad picture here.)






                      
                                        Billy, at Smith Rock 2009

**Note: I guess the movie we just saw was "True Grit", but the Rooster Cogburn Character was in it.

How to Pick a Ride

     Billy and I each own a copy of a very dog eared road atlas. Every time we return from a motorcycle ride, we get out our atlases and highlight the roads we traveled.  Of course, the Oregon page has more yellow than any other.

    
     There is also a page in the front of my atlas, where I have highlighted the states and provinces I have ridden.

     So how do we pick a place to ride? That's easy; go someplace that isn't yellow yet! That's exactly what we did on Friday. We had a beautiful day ahead of us, and the desire to go for a ride. We pulled out the dog eared atlases and found a road to the coast that was not yet yellow. Packed a few snacks, filled up the water bottles, and away we went.

     The road from Hillsboro to Yamhill is one we've traveled many times, but after that, it was uncharted territory. We turned west, and soon came to a fork in the road. In my mind, we should have taken the left fork, but we took the right, and came to a sign that said "Pavement Ends". Don't get me wrong, we love riding off pavement, but two logging trucks came out while we were getting our bearings, and we decided it wasn't a good choice.

     Back at the fork, we got back on the right track. The road was beautiful, with lots of good curves and twisties. We did encounter a gravel stretch. It wasn't long enough to qualify as an "off road" ride, but added a little excitement. Our road came out in the tiny town of Beaver, where we headed north, on Hwy 101, toward Tillamook.

     Being Labor Day weekend, we did encounter some holiday traffic on 101. We took an impromptu left turn, to get away from the crowd. This route took us along the coast, to this beautiful lookout.

     We followed the road to Netarts. We've seen signs pointing the way to Netarts many times, but have never been there. It's one of those places that you have to go to on purpose; it's not really on the way to anything. Since we were so close, and it has that great, funny name, we made a quick visit to Netarts. Not too much to report, just your average seaside town, but it's fun to say Netarts!

     Heading north, we thought we would stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, for a bathroom break and a few samples of cheese. Not a good idea. Everyone and their dog was there. Lots of people waiting in line for ice cream and cheese samples.

     Crowds are not our thing, and besides that, Tillamook stinks. I mean it REALLY stinks. I know it takes a lot of cows to make cheese, and I know cows are kind of smelly, but this is a "you fell face first into a fresh cow pie, and got some stuck in your nostrils" kind of stink. Time to head home.

     We headed back to Hillsboro on a road that Billy had ridden many times, but was not yet yellow in my book. He said it was fun, and he was right. Lots of curves and good views! When we arrived back in Hillsboro, we got out the highlighters. 200 miles and more yellow roads. Pretty good day!