2 months in portland

so yesterday made it official that kyle and i have been in portland for 2 months and we are really enjoying ourselves! i made cupcakes to celebrate!

i have been working a ton--this week i am scheduled about 24 hours at express and about 20 hours at applebees. which in reality isn't a lot...but when they are part time jobs not paying that well...it seems like a lot. and i haven't had a day off since last monday (september 27) and my next day off should be wednesday, october 13. i have a job interview tomorrow for a relief dietitian position with a senior citizen center based from providence hospital. it is also conveniently located about 5 blocks from our apartment!

kyle has also been working quite a bit...and it has been showing because his tips have been awesome! we are now going shopping tomorrow night because he wants to buy some more pants. and i would never complain about shopping!

sammie (the kitty) has adjusted well to life in portland. every morning she watches the birds gather in our courtyard of the apartment complex and she runs back and forth between the living room and the bedroom depending on where the birds fly. she is hilarious! she also ate part of a cupcake i had made for kyle and i.

other fun things we have been doing recently: our friend, dan, from columbia, mo moved out to seattle a couple of weeks ago. we have now spent the last 2 weekends hanging out with him. we met him in olympia, wa to play a day tournament for ultimate frisbee. our team, rowboat, actually got first place in the tourny! so yay! kyle and i then drove up to seattle for the night to hang out. and then this past weekend dan came down to portland. we spent the entire weekend drinking beer and hanging out. kyle and i have also been playing a lot of trivia on monday nights with a group of frisbee friends at a local bar. it is really fun...we placed 2nd place last week!

kyle and i like to keep things low key though and have been checking books out from the library and also getting tv shows on dvd from there as well, so that has been keeping us occupied! and we do occasionally rent movies from the redbox down the street!

but i hope things are well with everyone! i'll post soon about our apartment accompanied with pictures!

-megan ♥

The Ocean!!!!!

She is standing 1,700 ft above that body of water there (Pacific Ocean)

We made it to the coast!  5 weeks after being in Portland, we finally made it to go see the ocean.  It took us an hour and a half to make it to the area we were looking for (but we drove around for about 20 min before we settled in).  We started in Manzanita, stopping at a beach and checking out the sights.

It was a little cloudy when we arrived...something we kind of knew as we left that morning, but we were ready to see ocean so we didn't really care.  The beach was still great to be at...very soft sand.

We walked down one way out towads the point.  Threw a frisbee around a little bit.  Watched doggies run and have a great time.  Stopped at a log to eat some lunch that we packed for ourselves (PB&J, mmmmm).


After lunch we set out on the Oregon Coast Trail, ready to conquer Neahkahnie Mountain.  We made our way out on a trail head that started just off of highway 101, and began our trek winding back and forth over the Pacific before we disappeared into the woods, rapidly ascending  as we went.  It was 2 1/2 miles to the top, and peaked at 1,700 feet.  It was the hikiest type of hike I've ever done.  Tight trails, some steep inclines, fallen trees we had to climb over...it was fun.  In the time it took us to hike, the sky started to clear up and all the low clouds had lifted

Proud Megan

Tired Kyle

And the view from the top was great!









Back down the mountain we went, and onwards towards the beach.  Our destination was downhill from where we were parked, and the hike took us past a large sized cove.  We decided to take a slight detour and go explore the points of the cove we passed by.  There was a lightly treaded path that we followed, which got a little rough at points, but we emerged for a great view over the Pacific!

Cool rock sticking out of the water

Oceans are cool!

We found our way back to the trail and followed it back down to the beach.  We pulled out the frisbee again and started playing more catch while watching the surfers decked out in full wet suit play on the wake.  A couple dogs were chasing each other throughout the beach, and we walked along the shore.  We turned around to find a great view of Neahkahnie!

The feeling at the top was great, but really wasn't complete until after getting this perspective of what we just finished.

Neahkahnie Mountain from the beach

Washington Park - Hoyt Arboretum

Trees!!!!  Big Trees!!!!!  And LOT'S of them!!!!!!!

Washington Park is a 400 acre park located just outside downtown Portland.  The transition from downtown buildings and living to the green filled hills is abrupt (and awesome).  The arboretum (tree place) is buried deep within the park.  It sprawls over 147 acres, has 21 trails stretching over 12 miles, and features more than 8,000 individual trees.  Plants from every continent are represented in Portland!

We visited the Arboretum and set out on the 4 mile trail that loops around the collection.  The arboretum is arranged by family, and the hike winds us through the entire collection.  Conifers, Redwoods, Oaks lead off our hike, and we plan on following our way to the Maples and the Bamboo.  We continue along on the trail we started out on, the Wildwood trail, and wind up and down hills, past the Pittock Mansion, descending down to a road and a 3 1/2 mile marker and a trail map.  We stop to gaze at the map, just to check our bearings, and come to find ourselves now in Forest Park.  Instead of walking 3 1/2 miles in a loop, we traveled 3 1/2 miles straight north, and Megan had to be back for work in a couple hours...oops.  We double back, and manage to make it back to the car in time for Megan to get ready, but we missed out on the second half of park.

We had thought Wildwood was the 4 mile loop around the arboretum.  Turns out Wildwood is a 40 mile loop  that goes around all of Portland!  It just happens to run through the arboretum for a short time...oh well.  We didn't get to see the whole arboretum, but the hike was great anyway.  It just gives us an excuse to return to the arboretum, plus it keeps up with Megan and I's tradition of getting lost on hikes!

Work work work work

First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of attention I have been paying to this blog.  My best excuse is that I don't have internet in my apartment, but it mostly comes down to me being too lazy. 

I have been doing other things with my time though, mostly work related.  I found work exactly one week after arriving.  I'm a bartender at a "Biercafe" just a few blocks from our apartment, so the location is very convenient.  The cafe is attatched to a beer store (it is illegal to sell liquor and beer in the same store in the state of Oregon, so we sell 99% beer and that's why we call ourselves that) that offers over 1200 different bottles of beer (including Boulevard and a little Schlafly).  The cafe side has 17 taps of "uncommon" beer.  Basically, we strive to have beer on tap that you aren't going to find at every other bar in Portland (we recently had a creme brulee beer from New York).  Beer Advocate magazine ranked us 23 in the "best places to drink a beer on the planet" article they ran (it's framed in the store).  We host tasting events with different breweries frequently (7 times since I started) some of which bring the head brewer in to poor and field questions.  Everybody that works here is very knowledgeable about beer, and love talking about it all the time.  We field a lot of questions from patrons about certain beers, and are asked for recommendations often..  Basically my job allows me to stand around and talk about beer all day!

It's a good gig.  

weekend 1 in portland!

so kyle has given me permission to use his blog to keep everyone updated about our lives! it just makes more sense if we share one right?!?! i just wish he wouldn't have named it "kyle in portland". LAME!

anyways! i thought i would share a little bit about our first weekend in portland!

kyle and i went running on both saturday and sunday! it was really nice to get out and about, but it was also really helpful because i now know the neighborhood a little better! both days we ran to laurelhurst park and back to our apartment. laurelhurst is a really cool park with basketball hoops, a walking/running/biking path, and lots and lots of grassy areas for people to hang out! there were also signs for movies in the park which kyle and i are planning on checking out!

on sunday we went wondering around downtown which was really fun! we stopped in at powells, the giant bookstore which takes up an entire city block and is 3 stories tall! we basically looked at fun travel books and maps and portland hiking things! we also stopped in a really cool kitchen store that was super expensive so we didn't buy anything! but the store offers cooking classes and i really really want to sign up for one! they just sound really fun! another place we went to was cupcake jones and i have decided we are going to go there whenever people come visit us...so work on that people! we had the "what's up doc" cupcake which was carrot cake filled with vanilla bean pastry cream and topped with cream cheese icing and a hand made candied carrot! definitely not something as a dietitian i would recommend, but definitely something i would eat over and over again! =) the menu changes monthly there and different cupcakes are offered everyday!

kyle and i continue to apply for jobs, but nothing promising has came about yet which is super lame. we have been taking advantage of the library with all of the free things it offers such as internet, books, movies, and cds! so thats where i am right now as i write this!

we have yet to finish unpacking all of our stuff! (mostly it is just my stuff left now!) so once that is all done, i will post some pictures of our cozy little apartment!

and finally, here are some pictures i had from our roadtrip out here!

sammie sleeping underneath the driver's seat (she is a little weird...)

cool rock formations in utah

kyle and sammie (she made it that far in a car she had to see something cool!) at horsetail falls!

multnomah falls

Oregon

Day 3 - 3 hours to go


We woke up excited about the drive.  Highway 84 runs along the Columbia river, which separates Oregon from Washington, and it contains 77 waterfalls on the Oregon side.  The drive through the Cascades was big, and green, and mountainous.  We passed Mt. Hood (tallest point in Oregon), but Megan was sleeping and I missed it.  Megan's parents told is it was snow capped and enormous, dwarfing all the other peaks nearby (which I already thought were big).  We were a little bummed about missing the view, but decided that we would be traveling up Mt. Hood soon enough anyway, so it wasn't a big loss.

Megan at Multnomah Falls

The part we were most excited about that morning was the Columbia River Scenic Highway, which runs parallel to 84 about 30 miles from Portland, and runs along 7 year long water falls.  We drove the highway, and stopped at the first two falls we came to, the second one we stopped at being the second largest year long waterfall in America.  Multnomah Falls.  Megan had wanted to find the location on the cover of her Fodor's Portland travel guide, and we found it before we even ever reached Portland!

Our apartment was a 20 minute drive from the falls, and is conveniently located right off the highway (we drove right by it at first).  We went and got some lunch at a pizza place a couple blocks away, then returned to fill out our paper work and get the keys.  Our apartment came with a downstairs storage center, a small garden plot outside our building, and, while it is a little old, the apartment was MUCH nicer than I had expected!  It is also filled with convenient storage features, including a giant wardrobe in the bedroom so Megan was able to actually fit all her clothes!

The unloading went smoothly.  We are on the second floor, but the stairs were wide open so transporting the bigger items were much easier than it could have been.  The hardest part of the unloading was returning the Uhaul, as Megan's dad and I had to learn the keys to navigating our south neighborhood the hard way.

After a little organizing, we headed downtown to Rogue Brewery for our first Portland meal (and beers!).  Food was good.  Beer was great.  And the bathroom tour was worth the guy badgering our table for 5 minutes (really was worth the trip, if you are ever offered [this also assumes you will be in Portland sometime]).

Night led to morning, which led to breakfast.  We hopped in the car and headed out to the famous Voodoo Donuts.  Voodoo is known for it's unusual and eclectic donut variety, as well as it's overall deliciousness!

General Custard and Cap'n Crunch...yummmm

We next headed out to Target for some apartment items, and found an Ikea while we were out there.  So we all got to experience Ikea for the first time, which was great! (Megan's didn't really think so).

Shopping led to lunch at Chipotle, which led to the departure of Megan's parents, which led to Megan and I, on our own, in Portland, our move finally completed! (except for that whole unpacking thing)

The Journey

Day 1 - 30 hours to go


7:30 am central, Megan, Sammie (the kitty) and I head out on the road.  Megan's parents left about a half hour before us so we were playing a little catch up.  3 hours into the trip, Megan and I stop to gas up and happen to run into her parents for the first time in the day.  They were pulling out of the gas station as we were pulling in.  This was not communicated, and really freaked me out as we passed in our respective cars.  We caught them on the highway shortly after, and caravaned through Iowa (for 10 min) and onto Newburg, NE where we stopped at a rest area for a picnic lunch.  We brought the cat out with us, but she seemed very suspicious of the world, cowering under the picnic table near our legs.  We gave her a little food, but the bowl was too out in the open for her liking, and she refused to travel that extra foot out from under the table.  We moved the bowl closer for her, and she ate her lunch looking around nervously, still suspicious of her surroundings.  She had spent that first leg of the trip laying on the floor in the back seat, often times half laying in her litter box.  As we got back in the car, I brought her up on my lap on the passenger side, where she sat for a little, but eventually opting for the floor space below me, doing her best to take away my leg room.  She seemed to handle the car well, sleeping the majority of our time in the car.

We drove to Cheyenne, WY and stopped at a Red Lobster for dinner.  Then hoped back in the car for another 2 and a half hours before we stopped Rawlins, WY for bed.

Day 2 -  16 hours to go


Another early morning.  Another early start.  After a continental breakfast, we were on the road at 7 am, this time mountain time, and on our way through the rest of Wyoming.  We crossed the continental divide right away on our travels, and we were all very antsy to get out into the mountains.  Nebraska just didn't do much to excite any of us.  We started to gain elevation while passing through Utah, and the Trailblazer hauling the Uhaul started to struggle to keep the pace we started the trip at.  Our lightweight civic (with no tow) decided to zip ahead to our next stop, Ogden, UT, and find a spot to stop for lunch.  We had our final highway change just before Salt Lake City, turning onto 84 and driving through the heart of the famous ski mountains of the Salt Lake area.  The drive was gorgeous!  Winding through rocky peaks and along cool blue streams!  It was all we could talk about while enjoying our Panda Express (and the news about Favre).

We continued on, past the lake, through Idaho, and onto our arrival in Oregon.  We were welcomed into the state by huge rolling hills running along the Snake River, and traveled north, into the Pacific time zone, to Barley Brown's Brewpub, located in the less than 10,000 resident Baker's City, and home of the best American-style wheat beer for 2010 (official).  After dinner, it was back in the car for one more 90 mile push to Pendleton, OR for the night.  On our drive, our vehicles climbed Blue Mountain, then had a 25 minute descent, winding back and forth, with the the lights of Pendleton down below.  It was a great way to end the day!

6 hours to go

I will be waking up in 6 hours to begin my 30 hour travel across the country to the great Pacific Northwest.  My final destination? Portland, Oregon.  I have gone through a very long and stressful day of packing and cleaning, and I'm now on a couch with a beer and a computer, getting ready to start the next step in my life.

I'm often asked why.  "Why Portland?"  Which is a fair question, and I suppose I don't have the best answer for some people because I will be traveling through 6 different states and do not have employment on the other side.  But, there is a lot of industry in Portland that I would be thrilled to be working in, and therein lies the attraction.  It helps that Portland is an hour from the ocean and an hour from the mountains, has one of the largest Ultimate frisbee communities in the world (already have a team, first tournament is in 2 weeks), and is one of the best beer cities in America.  I'm searching for employment with a brewery and hoping to grow my interest in the outdoors as well as my involvement in the world of Ultimate.  These are the three biggest reasons I have for selecting Portland, Oregon as my new place of residence.

I've been going to school in Missouri since 2005 and have lived here year round since 2007.  While the people that know me the best here are aware that I complain about the state of Missouri ALL the time, I really have enjoyed my time in Columbia, and consider it a big reason for my desire to head to the Northwest.  A lot of elements of Columbia that I value I can find on a larger scale in Portland, and because of that I will never forget my time spent in Missouri.

I will miss the University and the college scene.  I enjoyed my education here and it was fun while it lasted.  But I will mostly miss my secondary educators who have taught me about the world of beer and of Ultimate.  Both of these have become very important in my life and I will never forget all the people that have been apart of those experiences while in Columbia.  You all are the reasons I am moving on (but know that that is a good thing).

This blog is a means for me to write (and I may start writing about any random subject) and to keep friends and family a little informed on how my transition to the Northwest is going.  I will try to keep updates active at least once a week (that's the current goal anyway).