Outdoor Adventure Meets Urban Soul: Portland, Oregon
Keep it weird, keep it in the Rose City of Portland 🌹
Portland is a city of extraordinary natural context. It is also a city that has built something equally compelling within that landscape: a food culture that punches far above its size, a network of independent bookshops, breweries, coffee roasters, and music venues that give the city a creative texture unlike anywhere else in the Pacific Northwest, and a commitment to livability and urban design that has made it a model, and occasionally a cautionary tale, for cities across the country.
Travels:
Alaska | AS 1486: Dallas ➡️ Portland
🛫 16:10 CDT DFW (2m Early)
🛬 18:11 PDT PDX (13m Early)
Duration: 4 hr, 1 min
Stay:
Red Lion Inn & Suites Vancouver (2-Star Hotel | 3.3 ⭐️ 🏳️🌈)
13206 NE Hwy 99, Vancouver, WA 98686
Located near the junction of I-5 and I-205, with direct access to downtown Vancouver and Portland.
The rooms are spacious, each with an in-room coffee maker and microwave. The Executive Suites are also equipped with a full-size kitchen.
Guests can enjoy free breakfast, coffee and juice each morning in the lobby.
Activities:
Lan Su Chinese Garden (4.7 ⭐️)
239 NW Everett St, Portland, OR 97209
In the middle of Portland’s Old Town Chinatown neighborhood, behind an unassuming wall, an entirely different world opens up.
Lan Su Chinese Garden is a place of richly authentic Chinese culture, designed in the tradition of the classical scholar gardens of Suzhou, China, Portland’s sister city.
Portland Japanese Garden (4.6 ⭐️ 🚺)
611 SW Kingston Ave, Portland, OR 97205
Located in the West Hill section of the Washington Park.
Proclaimed to be the most authentic Japanese garden outside of Japan and one of Oregon's most beloved spaces. It spreads across more than twelve acres of meticulously tended landscape, divided into five distinct garden styles, each reflecting a different tradition of Japanese design. The strolling pond garden, the tea garden, the flat garden, the natural garden, and the sand and stone garden all occupy the same hillside while feeling like entirely separate worlds.
Tips: Parking is extremely limited, ride-share is preferred.
International Rose Test Garden (4.8 ⭐️)
400 SW Kingston Ave, Portland, OR 97205
Located in Washington Park, the International Rose Test Garden holds more than 10,000 individual rose bushes representing over 610 different varieties, in bloom from late May through October.
The garden traces its origins to World War I, when hybridists sent roses from around the world to Portland for safekeeping, fearing the plants would be destroyed in the bombings of Europe. What began as an act of preservation became one of the most celebrated public gardens in the country.
Latourell Falls (4.9 ⭐️)
Located in Guy W. Talbot State Park along the Historic Columbia River Highway, just 30 miles east of Portland.
Latourell Falls is one of the most dramatically situated waterfalls in the entire Columbia River Gorge. The main falls drop 249 feet in a single, nearly vertical plunge over a basalt cliff face streaked with yellow lichen, framing the water in a way that looks almost deliberately composed.
The short trail from the parking area to the base of the falls is less than half a mile and virtually flat, making it one of the most accessible waterfall viewpoints in Oregon.
Latourell Falls runs year-round, fed by the consistent rainfall of the Pacific Northwest, and is at its most powerful in late winter and early spring. In summer the mist at the base offers welcome relief on a warm Columbia Gorge afternoon.
Rooster Rock State Park (4.6 ⭐️ 🏳️🌈)
I-84 Exit 25, Corbett, OR 97019
Daily Parking Permit: $10 Oregon Resident or $12 Non-Resident.
Located about 22 miles east of Portland off I-84. The views from the beach toward Crown Point and the Gorge walls are quietly spectacular.
The park draws swimmers, picnickers, windsurfers, and families looking for a beach day within easy reach of the city. The Columbia River runs wide and relatively calm here, and on a hot Portland summer afternoon the water is exactly where everyone wants to be.
Rooster Rock is also home to one of Oregon’s designated clothing-optional beaches, a secluded stretch on the western end of the park that has been part of the landscape since the 1970s.
Cannon Beach / Haystack Rock
Public Parking: 1172 S Hemlock St, Cannon Beach, OR 97110
Tucked along the northern Oregon coast about 80 miles west of Portland. Cannon Beach is a small, unhurried town of galleries, bookshops, and seafood restaurants that has managed to grow in reputation without losing its quiet character.
At the center of it all stands Haystack Rock, a 235-foot sea stack rising directly from the shoreline, one of the largest intertidal monoliths in the world. It is impossible to look away from and changes character completely with the light, the tide, and the season. At low tide the rocks around its base reveal tide pools filled with sea stars, anemones, and hermit crabs.
Powell’s City of Books (4.9 ⭐️ 🏳️🌈)
1005 W Burnside St, Portland, OR 97209
Powell's City of Books alone is worth the trip. The largest independent bookstore in the world occupies an entire city block in the Pearl District and operates less like a retail store than a literary institution.
