#5GBDA Portland Head

I took the scenic route from Seattle to Portland, Oregon, my next major destination.  Along the way I stopped at Cape Disappointment, which had a lighthouse.  I've taken pictures of lighthouses in Michigan, Maine, and Illinois so I figured I should see at least one out west.  The weather wasn't all that great so the pictures weren't as nice as they could be; Cape Disappointment indeed.

Eventually I crossed the Columbia River or whatever it is between Washington and Oregon.  It's about as scary as driving across the Mackinaw Bridge between the Michigan peninsulas because you're driving with nothing but water around you--and there was road construction not making it much fun either.

Then there was a long scenic drive to suburban Portland.  I'd noticed a crown on my upper left was kind of wobbly but was a little freaked the next morning when I bit into a mini muffin and half the crown literally broke off!  On a muffin?  I could have understood if it was something hard like a nut or bacon or something like that but muffins are really soft; it's almost like breaking a tooth eating pudding or ice cream.

In hindsight I probably didn't need to do anything about it.  I mean it probably wasn't going to kill me.  Or probably not even really going to cause any pain.  But when I see a problem I like to fix the problem, thus I looked around on the Internet for a dentist.

So I found a dentist that was open but of course they wouldn't just yank the fucking thing out.  Instead I had to wait until Monday for that, so I just tried not to eat anything too hard on that tooth.  It probably would have been better if I had waited until I checked into an extended stay motel with a real fridge and freezer and stuff because after they pulled the crown out it was kind of a pain in the ass to keep running to the ice machine at the motel to ice my sore gum.

Most of the next week I spent in an extended stay motel in suburban Portland.  A few times I went out to the Fred Meyer (their version of Kroger) to get soup and stuff like that.  It wasn't really a lot of fun for obvious reasons.  But they did have really good soup in their deli.

Sunday, pretty much the last day I was there, I went out to the International Test Rose Garden in Portland.  And saw, wait for it, roses.  Lots of roses.  Not that I could smell them but I could see them.  And you can see them!

I also went to the Japanese gardens that are in the same area and saw the Japanese garden stuff.  And you can see it!

Then I drove through Portland, past Powell Books, which would have been cool to stop at though I don't really need paper books.  I'm not sure I'd want to park there anyway as it seemed like a skeevy neighborhood with a ton of homeless people.

I went to some park where I hoped to get some good pictures of the city or something but there were too many trees and it was too hazy to get much.

That was pretty much it for me and Portland.  Has anyone seen the Chubby Chatterbox lately?  I don't think he's updated his site in a long time.  Kinda wonder if the worst has happened and the chatterbox has been silenced.