The Journey is the Thing: Day 6, 7, & 8: Portland, OR

~ Just the Facts ~

Restaurants: The BBQ Truck at @ Nature's Country Store, Hopworks Urban Brewery, Joe's Donuts, Coffee House in the Grove, Food Trucks,
College: Pacific University, Lewis & Clark College, Reed College, Portland State University

There are lots of colleges in the greater Portland area. Thankfully, we were only visiting 3 of them with a driveby one to be sure it wasn't a good fit.

We camped in a county park about a half-hour outside of Portland. It was along the Clackamas river and just beautiful. We had the place almost to ourselves. Really peaceful. Oh, and bunnies were hopping around.

Our first trip was to Pacfic University which is in Forest Grove, about 40 minutes west of Portland near the coast. Greg had to take a conference call so the kids and I left him in the car outside a cute little coffee shop while we did the tour. Different schools handle prospective student tours differently. At Pacific, you meet with an admissions counselor before you go on the tour. We enjoyed that meeting -- one on one attention is good! The campus is beautiful. And, Ruth *loved* it. Definitely on the list.

Ruth with Boxer, their Chinese dragon-goat-dog mascot

Gage at the indoor field - huge and perfect for the Northwest's weather

Pacific is a beautiful campus

We headed back to Portland to have lunch with friends from college days, Adlai & Lisa and their son, Henry. It was too short but a great chance to catch up with them a bit. After lunch, we made our way to Lewis & Clark University just outside Portland.

Lewis & Clark is another great college. We were pretty tired and it was pretty hot so we had to keep reminding ourselves that 90F weather was not the norm in Portland. Also, we found that doing 2 tours in one day was a bit much!

The last college we visited in Portland was Reed College. Another spectacularly beautiful campus. We got excited about this one.

After visiting Reed, we drove by the very urban Portland State campus, had lunch at the food trucks and then took a long drive up the Columbia and then wound our way back through beautiful Oregon countryside to our campground. What a day.