Ok, so we are in Albany. You might be asking why we didn’t stay in Salem instead.
The funny thing about Salem is that for some reason we associate it with evil, but we aren’t sure why. I am thinking about a book I read as a kid by Stephen King, though I can’t remember if it is about evil.
My wife isn’t sure why either, but the name gives her the creeps. The kids have no idea but as they are heavily influenced by everything we say and do, they too have agreed that it sounds creepy. It didn’t stop us driving through there – quickly, to avoid zombies.
So we are heading into Portland. As we enter the city, we turn to TripAdvisor city guides and not for the first time, we encounter an epic fail.
I know that Nike are based in Portland, so I have decided that there must be a huge Nike amusement park somewhere. We head for Niketown, central Portland. 30 minutes of driving around this clean city and we can’t find it. We ask a lady, she has no idea. We ask another lady, she says that Niketown is just a Nike store…and we couldn’t find that either so we gave up and headed for the number one attraction in Portland – the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.
One thing to note here – every single place to visit in the US has to have the word ‘National’ in it to give it clout, which seems to be a marketing thang. Let’s face it, caves formed by a volcano aren’t really a ‘National’ Monument, but a rock formation. How you can have a ‘National’ scenic area, I have no idea. I would suspect Local Scenic Area would stop it from getting as many visitors.
Anyway, back to the point. We followed the navigation on the iPhone based on TripAdvisor’s internal location and there was a bypass and a river drain. After 45 minutes of driving around and around we gave up and I headed for the hills.
This turned out to be very fortunate because after a while of driving away from the city, we actually found the aforementioned gorge and the spectacular waterfalls. This is well worth a visit. It has no ‘Terrible’ reviews at all on TripAdvisor and that says it all. The Multnomah Falls are the highlight – see the pics.
After spending a few hours at the different falls we headed north to travel to our next location, Olympia. We are staying here for two reasons.
1. Seattle hotels are even more expensive than Portland
2. I had invoked male logic once more and it sounded cool.
See you there.