Portland – The Best-Laid Schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Come crumbling down when you forget it’s spring break. Yep. Thursday was the day we had set aside to go check out Multnomah Falls. It was one of the items on our Absolutely Must See/Do list for the trip. Every photo looked amazing. Plus lots of good hiking trails. Thursday was forecasted to be sunny and delightfully warm, so Chad and I set out for breakfast and a leisurely stroll on the Willamette River trail to grab a cache and stretch our legs in anticipation of a big day of hiking.
Our first actual stop was to get a geocache called DR. Who. which has a crazy amount of favorite points. Plus, seriously…it’s called DR. Who. It was delightful! Just delightful. And that’s all I am going to say besides, if you find yourself in Portland, go get that cache!
Our second shop was, don’t be stunned, a bottle shop. Being clear in WV, we don’t get much of the fancy West Coast microbrewery beers. So we had taken an empty suitcase just so we could mule back a few several bottles of some good beer that otherwise we wouldn’t get our hands on easily. Which is where I stumbled upon this particular beast.
Man, they put that stuff in everything. EVERYTHING I tell you.
So errands done, we headed out to Multnomah Falls. Us and every freaking body else under the sun. Because it was sunny and gorgeous and it was spring-freakin’-break. The interstate sign on the way to the official Multnomah Falls parking lot pretty much said, Lot is full, idiots; don’t even consider it. Which gave us enough warning to exit early onto the Columbia Gorge Scenic Byway. Which I would classify as abject chaos on this day. People were just pulling over and parking on the shoulder which was super narrow and then walking in the road. Did I mention it’s a super old, super narrow scenic byway.
Yeah. So by the time we reached the Falls I was already wanting to punch every person we saw and I was still in the car. So we paused to look at the Falls – we were stuck there in traffic anyway. Which was when the guy in giant Denali in front of us decides to start backing up for a better view of the Falls. Only hello, we are there in our tiny little Spark. Yeah, we got back on the interstate and headed to Base Camp Brewing because after that, I needed a beer. And to get away from the crowds.
While we were at Base Camp I noticed a cache 60 feet away called The Sandy Triangle. We had to go get it. And I’m so glad we did. It was awesome. The cache was underneath a metal plate in the sidewalk. Super cool and placed with the permission of the City. Plus the container was a metal beer growler from Base Camp.
From there we went to Burnside Brewing Company where we sat outside – me in the sun, Chad in the shade – and made friends with a fellow named Aaron from Harrisonburg, VA.
Since he was done with work, B joined us. From Burnside we – including Aaron because apparently we do not seem like axe murders – went in search of Upright Brewing. I say in search of because I’m pretty sure we drove in squares several times looking for parking once we got there and then found that Upright Brewing was….dun, dun, dun….in the basement. Yep, that sounds legit. Completely.
Also, you could only buy pitchers. With cash. Because of course.
At that point our pub crawling came to an end because WVU was playing in the Sweet 16 tournament and we needed to be near a television so we could watch. We didn’t watch long, but you know how it goes.
chris on March 26th 2015 in Geocaching, Travel