A Day in the McMenamins Empire

For our last night in Oregon, we managed to snag a highly coveted room at McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale, a 20 minute drive east of Portland.  Normally this place books up months in advance, but thanks to some random internet searching I found us a room on a Wednesday in July for our first stay there.

The McMenamins empire consists of breweries and hotels in historical buildings.  The main building at Edgefield was built in 1911 as the county poor farm and today the grounds have 74 acres with restaurants, pubs, a brewery, a winery, a distillery, two golf courses, a glassblowing workshop, a movie theatre, a spa, many gardens, and on and on.  And you can explore these grounds with a craft beer in hand!  The day we visited was extra busy, as a big art show was going on at the time.

Every hotel room should come with pint glasses. 

The hot pool outside Ruby's spa - Chad went for a soak on this hot day.

Rock and roll weather vane.

On a stroll through the lovely gardens.

The art show featured artists who used only recycled or reused materials.  It was somewhat interesting to wander through, but the event meant that happy hour was called off.  I think we would have rather had the cheap beer...

Lounging on one of the two patios on the second floor of the main building.

Someone told us what kind of plant this is, but I can't recall.  The leaves were huge!

Three Days in PDX

I'm sure there's other things to do in Portland than drink beer and eat delicious, cheap food, but we didn't bother with any of them.  We had three nights to enjoy one of our favourite cities and all its tasty offerings.

 My first visit to Upright Brewing, where we sampled the incredibly tasty Flora Rustica and the Levinator.

Fresh, local, and only $11 including tax.  Ahem, I'm looking at YOU, Vancouver.

The Grain & Gristle is associated with Upright Brewing.  It's a bit out of the way, but located in a cool neighbourhood.  You can sit on the patio and watch the hipsters go by while choosing from a smallish yet awesome beer selection and eating really delicious, reasonably priced food.

The awe-inspiring Reggie.

The somewhat less dangerous biscuit and jam.

Pine State Biscuits.  Enough said.

Drinking chocolate at Cacao.

Yummy sour beers at the Cascade Brewing Barrel Room.

We tried the Lucky Labrador for the first time, and it was awesome.  The beer is solid, and they gave us free pints since it was our first visit.  The food was good and cheap.  And there are dogs on the patio!  As the pictures below demonstrate, we may have had too much fun there...

The eat-stravaganza continued the next day.

Chad had the original Schnitzelwich from a food cart.

We also went to the Blue Plate where I tried a grilled cheese and tomato soup with a pineapple soda.  The milkshake made for a big dessert to Chad's schnitzelwich.

And on our last evening we tried out Apex, which has sophisticated screens with an up to the minute tap list and a decent Mexican place next door where you can order your dinner.  We relived our Munich days with hefeweizens - perhaps more appropriate for a hot, July Portland day than a rainy, April Munich day!

A Tale of Ten Falls

Silver Falls State Park campground might have been full, but after a night of excitement in Stayton we headed back to the park to check out its star attraction, the Trail of Ten Falls.  Fourteen kilometres, ten waterfalls, and three hours later we have more waterfall pictures than we know what to do with.  I'll spare you most of them, but of course you want to see all ten falls, right?

1. South Falls - 177 feet.

The star of the show, really.  The rock behind the falls has been carved out over the years, with a little assistance from the builders of the state park to create a trail so that visitors can have a 360 degree view.

2. Lower South Falls - 93 feet.

3. Lower North Falls - 30 feet.

4. Double Falls - 178 feet.

5. Drake Falls - 27 feet. 

7. Winter Falls - 134 feet.

Many of these signs along the trail.  No diving off cliffs?  No throwing boulders off cliffs?

7. Twin Falls - 31 feet.

8. North Falls - 136 feet.

9. Upper North Falls - 65 feet.

10. Winter Falls - 134 feet.

As exhausted by hiking to waterfalls as you are of looking at photos of them, we drove back to Salem through some stunning countryside.

And finished the day, as we occasionally do, with a beer - this one was from Boon's Treasury, one of Salem's two McMenamin's establishments.

And finally (desperate to avoid the "suite hotel" at which we were staying) we went to see a movie at a theatre that doubled as a full service restaurant - Chad advises that Deschutes' Black Butte Porter is a great pair to the new Batman movie.

Random Stop in Stayton

Heading inland from the coast, we planned to stop in Independence, Oregon at the Rogue Brewing hop farm and then head for Silver Falls State Park (sure, it was a July Friday, but as the biggest state park in Oregon surely there would be vacancies there, right?).  We ended up at a Rodeway Inn in Stayton - a random little town about 15 miles east of Salem.  This is how we let that happen.

Even at their super cool rural farm, where Rogue is producing its own hops, barley, hazelnuts, and honey, they managed to let us down again.  No one in Newport had bothered to tell us that their tasting room in Independence - which is really in the middle of nowhere - doesn't open until 4 pm on Fridays.  That wasn't super helpful when we showed up at 1:30 in the afternoon.  We wandered around a bit, but didn't find anyone who would give us the time of day.

The "guard" dog and I check each other out.

Hops are awesome.  The McFrothys love hops!

Not all of the McFrothys love hazelnuts, though.

After our let down at Rogue, we drove through Salem to Silver Falls State Park to find that it was full, all 200+ sites of it.  As were the next two campgrounds we were tried.  The fourth was signed but didn't appear to exist.  So we ended up east of Salem in Stayton, a town that's only redeeming features are its cheap accommodation and a Mexican restaurant.

Recommendation: if you're travelling in Oregon on a late July weekend and want to camp, make a reservation.  If you get stuck, the Rodeway in Stayton isn't the worst place to stay, and has huge rooms so you can dry out your soggy camping gear from the night before :)