Social Butterflies, part 2

9/24/19 - 9/25/19 - Post Falls, ID to Hermiston, OR (199 miles) one night at Pioneer RV Park, $25
9/25/19 - 9/30/19 - Hermiston, OR to Portland, OR (188 miles) 5 nights at Columbia River RV Park, $45/night

Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA

To get from one brother to the next, we cut diagonally through Southeast Washington, and followed the Columbia River to Portland on the Oregon side.  Even though my brother, Chris, and family live in Washington, it’s really a suburb of Portland, and we found an affordable RV Park in Oregon, just across the river.  Unfortunately, this park was in a light industrial part of town, near the airport, trucking depots and railroad.  We got the tri fecta - planes, trains and automobiles!  Not only that, but the Air National Guard is based at the airport, so every morning up to five fighter jets took off bright and early right over our heads (except on the weekend)!

The Washington side of the metroplex is very nice.  There are only two bridges that cross the Columbia River and there’s shopping on the islands in between.  They can get very busy.   But once you get there, it’s clean and well-planned.  There’s a big farm on the way to Chris’s house, with pick your own offerings, but we refrained (I have yet to get my pumpkin!).  We spent a great weekend with Chris and his family, watching a very short soccer game that was called because of the weather (I wanted to see Audrey score a goal!)  and a Cowboys football game on TV, and lots of good food!

I really wanted to like Portland.  I’ve watched a few episodes of “Portlandia”, and I remember from our last visit that the city is zoned weird and the road system is crazy, so I expected it to be quirky.  We decided to be tourists one day and tried to drive downtown to walk around and pick up a dozen Voodoo Doughnuts (as seen on TV).  The highway traffic was always congested, even in the middle of the day, but the multiple bike, light rail, and bus lanes downtown kept us guessing as to which lane we would be in.  We circled Voodoo Doughnuts three times and never found a place to park - which turned out to be okay.  The homeless population there made the area questionable at best.  It was lunch time, so the Full Gospel Mission had a line down and around the block.

Please understand, I know there will always be homeless people in every city we go to.  I am sensitive to their needs.  But Portland seems to have taken it to the extreme. They seem to have accepted it (ignored it?) and allowed it to such a level that there are tent camps along the rivers and broken-down cars and RVs parked on the side of the roads despite the signs that say, “No Overnight Parking.”  I don’t pretend to know the answer, but it looks like these folks need help, and are not getting it.  Some will argue that they don’t want it, but I can’t imagine wanting to raise your children this way.  What about Portland attracts so many to this area?  It’s very sad.