Destination: Portland

This is the dumpy Days Inn I was talking about:

We arrived, dropped our stuff off and headed out for dinner.  Near the hotel, this was an un-pass-up-able choice:

This was the best that Burns, Oregon had to offer, for sure.  Inside:

We found out soon after sitting down that an insane old probable cat lady/definite hoarder owned and worked in the restaurant.  There was crap everywhere.  Sorry.  There were antiques everywhere.  Old broken juke boxes, old posters, old stuffed animals, old clocks, old etc.  And a Power Wheels brand motorcycle, still in the box, from about three years ago.  That kind of ruins the ‘old crap’ theme, but whatever.  This place was filled with junk to be sure.

We ordered some food, with low expectations and were brought out a complimentary garden salad.  Well, I guess it’s a garden salad If your garden produces supremely foul pickled beets:

Gross.

At least she included some awesome buttery and flaky Club crackers to make up for it.

Then, dinner:

 

Dry tasteless chicken, mashed potatoes from a box and green beans cooked in some gross oniony broth.  Not the best meal ever.

Bed time shortly thereafter.

Of interest:  When we were eating the complimentary continental breakfast in the lobby the following morning, an old man went up to the desk and asked for bandages from the Inn staff.  They asked how big of a bandage he was looking for.  He said, “Very big.  The stupid bed frame you guys have juts out about four inches and my wife bashed her leg on it.  She has a pretty big gash on it now and is bleeding.”

This is funny enough on its own.  Old women running into things is already funny.

Upon hearing this, a woman at the desk looked at him with mock concern, took a few steps towards the back room, turned to face him and said, “so you’re looking for bandages then?”

People are the best.

We checked out after breakfast and headed to the much ballyhooed (by Amanda’s Dad, Al) Bend, Oregon.  It’s where he wants to end up living (when he leaves Hickory, North Carolina), as he says it’s great there.

We checked into our hotel fairly early, got changed and headed out for lunch followed by a hike.  Lunch was here:

This place, Chow, is super duper annoying.  I could go on and on describing why it bothered me, but all I really need to tell you is that they had vegan options.  That’s really all you need to know about the place.  I had an almost impossible time deciding what to eat, but luckily, they serve breakfast all day.

First, there was this homemade corn/coconut/berry bread, with a preserve of raspberry descent on the  side, for spreading:

It was a little scary to eat, and coconut is just awful, but it was actually not too bad.  The coconut was undetectable.  Next up was my breakfast for lunch:

Unremarkable.

We finished up and headed for a hike nearby.  Bend was/is billed as a very outdoor loving community, so we had some high hopes for the hike.  We were slightly disappointed as the hike was mostly along a dusty, hilly and arid trail through a mostly bland, one colored sparse forest of sorts. 

Usually, when we go hiking, we’re looking for some sort of payoff at the end or somewhere along the trail; this had no such payoff. The only real scenic thing along the trail was a run of the mill creek that we only got a few peeks of:

 

Also, there was a covered bridge, but the lighting for that sucked:

Lens flare is tops.

After the three or so hours hiking, we headed back to the hotel, hot tubbed for a few minutes and decided to get some sloppy Chinese food from a local strip mall:

It was crappy.  It was a mistake.  Oh well.

The next day, we were off to Portland, which is full of hipsters.  If you are unfamiliar with hipsters, I’m sure I will go into great detail about them, and my general distaste of them, in my next post.  You should likely look forward to it.