Our three day trip to Portland included two different trips to the zoo. The first day’s itinerary was Powell’s Books, coffee, Portland Library and its fabulous details, Portland Art Museum, lunch at Southpark (fish!), the zoo, and a brew pub for dinner. All in the rain. Although it was 10 degrees colder once we got up to the elevation of the zoo, there was virtually no one else there except one third grade school class. It made it nice when viewing the baby elephant because the customary throngs did not materialize.
The second days’ itinerary was: art store, elephant statue (12 foot bronze), the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, Mexican restaurant lunch, the zoo, and a brew pub for dinner. In between, trolleys, busses and MAX trains plus walk through wetland parks…
In an attempt to get short snippets of video into my blog, I am using iMovie for the iPad to process some footage. It does not do as many things as the version on the laptop so you will see the top of a third-grader’s head in front of the penguins because I cannot crop it out using the iPad version. (Am I being fashion police if I say who would send there kid to the zoo in leopard print?) It is a more direct way to post into the blog. This is only a fraction of my footage of elephants so you can bet you will see more later in a more polished form. The cat you see is a caracal, similar to a lynx. Coffee stores and brew pubs…hmmmm…
I snapped a couple of views of my niece Katura’s elephant sketches and as luck would have it she posted on her blog today and it shows how she added washes to them the next time she sat down. (I think it was in that brew pub.) Katura’s blog is here.
Then we trained, trolleyed, and walked, passing through Tanner Springs Park to get to dinner. This park is urban space reclaimed for wetlands and has the most wonderful railroad tie wall with blue glass inserts that light up at dusk. Also, some of the industrial structures near the restaurant in the Pearl District.
The next morning we got up early and flew home.
One last picture: on this trip I was able to get a picture from the trolley of the Convention Center. A fascinating building…you could see the clouds all the way through it…
Wonderful trip, wonderful people, great town…
Lois Reynolds Mead 