The ‘Dredge Report

My friend J. came to Portland this weekend to visit before he heads back into the Miz. It was also my birthday, and it was also Labor Day weekend, so we tried to cram in the type of fun that makes a mid-20s person drop into bed exhausted at 10:30 pm. This is to say that we’re all getting old.

The first stop was Multnomah Falls, a must-see for anyone new to Portland. It’s a really big waterfall and it is darn’ pretty:

The next day (after proper recovery from the fishbowl-and-karoake excesses of the prior night, of course) was a road trip to the Oregon coast, where we stopped at Cannon Beach to see the Haystack Rock, which is well-known from The Goonies.

The beach wasn’t swimmable, but the sun came out and there were a dozen kites and half-a-dozen golden retrievers galloping, and it was all pretty wonderful. We purchased the only thing you can purchase in a quaint seaside town, which is taffy. Lots and lots of it, in all the Jelly-Belly flavors of the rainbow. We skipped the “butter” flavor. Maybe they meant “butter popcorn”-flavored, but I wasn’t one to take that risk.

Then we drove up to Astoria, at the tippy-top westmost part of Oregon. Astoria straddles both the Pacific Ocean and the mouth of the Columbia River, and the views are gorgeous.

But clearly, the views from the Astoria Column weren’t the real reason we were in that town. We were there to see the Goonies house. No one re-enacted the Truffle Shuffle because an old man was glaring down at us from a neighboring window.

The best part of Astoria, by far, is the sea lions. I could have watched them for hours, and since no one is there to supervise, you can get just close enough to annoy the hell out of them and hear them growl back at you, or make whatever sound it is that sea lions make when they get angry. Sure sounded like growling to me.

Saturday night was dinner at Beast. Only in Portland can you get a stellar six-course meal w/ wine pairings for $90 (tip freaking included). The meal was superb, the wine even better—they actually thought about the most appropriate choices for each course, which is increasingly rare. Steak tartare and quail egg and a foie gras bon bon made the second-course charcuterie plate the one to beat. It was candy for grown-ups. The only thing I didn’t like was the communal seating aspect of it. I can see the logic, wanting it to be an intimate neighborhood-y feel, but J. and I ended up at a table with three much older non-talkative couples. When we did try to engage them in convo, it felt like talking to distant relatives at a holiday cocktail party. AWK-ward.

And then on Sunday I brought back a bagful of croissants from Petite Provence, and then we went to Voodoo and Powell’s, and then we went to Eastburn for more food and skeeball, and then we died. Diagnosis: Gluttony.