Back to Portland- day 2

My intentions are always that I should write the posts I think of soon after I plan them, and have regular updates or what have you and things never seem to work out that way. First it always takes me hours to write these posts...... hours.......  and then I do the photo editing.  And so I break it up with some other things- namely- I have been weirdly obsessed with getting this house purge done and I have been daily weeding my flower bed for 30-60 minutes and also weirdly, practicing piano for 20-30 min.....  I say weirdly because usually in the summer I have the attention span of a chihuahua, and don't stick with anything remotely regimented.  I am scared you guys.  Lol.  I also have not gotten to Bayfield since June and I am VERY sad about that too.  I have not been letting the wind blow me in the directions that I prefer, but I guess that is the way it goes.....  so there you have it.  Back to Portland.

Bridge of the Gods from a little island in Cascade Locks

We had informally scheduled Tuesday as museum and downtown day, so we had a wide open morning to plan.  Because we wanted to add Washington into our list of states we have been in, we decided to go over to the other side and travel up the gorge from the north.  Again spectacular views, and you could see some of the Oregon waterfalls from the highway.  That was pretty cool!  We drove east along the highway and made several stops to get out and walk around a little and of course I took pictures.  I found myself looking at the train tracks a lot, and saw several trains.  I said in the last post, I find the use of the trains so interesting since you just don't see them up here very often anymore.

A little misty morning shot from Washington state

We also came across this HUGE dam that I know I saw from the airplane.  I saw several of them- I tell ya- airplane travel pushes all my right buttons.  We stopped and looked at the dam from the Washington side, as close as we could really get. And walked on down near the river (by walked I of course mean,  climbed down on rocks and things which always mean praying for the safety of my camera) and saw people fishing from the shore.  Turns out, when I questioned a nice man later in the morning, that they are fishing for salmon and other fishes (maybe sturgeon??  I could be wrong) that are in the river.  Oh!! Salmon, duh.  It apparently had been raining plenty there and the water that was going through that dam was incredible. The power behind that flow was massive.  You think the lower dam here in town has a lot of water going through it this year.....  well it is a trickle compared.

You could get right to the water here.

If  you look hard you can see itty bitty people- I didn't want to go get my other lens at this point.  I was going for landscapes anyway.

I really liked the way this looked, nothing special, except everything is beautiful 

Anyway, after 4 or 5 stops we headed on over to the Bridge of the Gods and crossed into Oregon.  I am not positive why you have to pay to use that bridge but you do, and it is a nifty bridge indeed.  There is a back story to it you can read about here, but the science of it breaks down to this- there was a massive landslide wayyyyy back in the day and the native american folk could walk from one side to the other on a land bridge- I am totally paraphrasing , work with me here.  Anyway during another natural occurrence (I think an earthquake) in the 1600's  that bridge disappeared.   In the 1920's a man made structure was built and called Bridge of the Gods.....  a little late to the game it seems, but still.  So there is a lot of history behind it that involves treacherous rivers and steam engines and all sort of things, so read about it and the town of Cascade Locks if you want the whole story.....

I loved the mountain lion painting on this post, there were others, but I liked this one

This is a beautiful location and we had a little walk around there.  Mean while there is all the oooooooing and ahhhhhhhing that the mountains and the rivers ALWAYS make us say.  Beauty.  So, low and behold there is a visitors center at the Bonneville Dam!  Shut the front door!  Now if someone would have said, oh you have to stop at the dam and see the salmon ladders I would have scoffed and said to myself, oh no I don't and I never would have. But, since we had gotten so curious about this place from the other side- we needed to stop and see.  I didn't know there were salmon ladders here, it occurred to me at some point before I got to the state that there were abstractly these things somewhere, but I had no idea.

Look at that water

That was a really cool place- they had gardens and a visitor center where you could go underground and see the salmon and other fish swimming upstream.  Apparently they count them every day too.  They swim by a series of windows under the building- and some poor people have to count fish.  Bless their hearts.  It was so incredibly interesting though, to see them under water and then to look at them from above.  It was a great stop to make.....  

swim fishy swim!

A little section of the ladders

They swam under this gate- through an opening

So, where did we eat lunch?  Did we eat lunch?  OH WAIT, we had cherries for lunch and ate an early supper.  Lol.  Most days we did indeed not eat lunch at all, because we were busy!

These are the Rainier cherries I had

So the afternoon was devoted to the Portland Art Museum.  We traveled on into Portland from Bonneville Dam and headed downtown.  There surely are a lot of bridges in that city- which seems like a Captain Obvious statement, but there are.  It was another beautiful day, a little cooler than Monday which at 90 degrees and some change is hot by anybody's standards I should think. Well, I do know there could be a friend or two from the south who may think 90 is coolish, but they **might** have a skewed sense of reality.  Lol.  Or else I'm a heat sissy, which is the actual truth.

Bridges

Another bridge- a really cool one

Told ya there are a lot of bridges

The Portland Art Museum was great- I was really excited to see the beautiful PNW Native American masks and such that I have taught my art kids about in the part.  There was a lot of good traditional art as well- and every year when I hit up a new museum I find something unexpected and compelling.  This year was no different.

A cooking vessel (I believe) - carved wood

The ultimate in transformation masks.  There is a mask when closed and an inner mask when open

The outside mask

This was a huge installation of a bunch of "things"  that spans along 3 floors. It is The Artifact Panel by William Morris.  Its really unique

Black Pottery by Maria Martinez

Here is the piece that I found the most fascinating during this particular visit.  It is a picture of a mushroom cloud, obviously, but look at the next pictures to see how it was done.  LOVE this.

Frank Stella

I don't know the artist here, but it really made me feel the loss of my Jacpot.

Love these little figures and the shadows on the walls as well

SO many ways you can think of hands and horses....  Love this 

Awesome photo from a series that is identified by the next photo.

When we finished there, we took a walk down by the river and did some people watching and deciding where to eat and what to do next and that sort of thing.  So we walked and shopped and then went to eat at a Lebanese restaurant called Habibi.  I had sort of a variety platter and I remember the baba ghanoush as being OUTSTANDINGLY yummy.  I need to learn to make that stuff!

There was more food than this, but look at that cool flat bread.  It was awesome, not so flat but it was yummy

This was a really good day, we did a lot of- which lane are we supposed to be in?  Which road is the one we need?  I think that we need to be in the other lane- oh shoot, well let's see where we can go from here....  Lol. Ah city driving.

Hey look, more bridges!

Beautiful day- 

Oh yeah this was a good day!  Full of art and rivers and cherries and dams and joy!