Oregon Trip Day 2

Our day started with another awesome breakfast at the hotel.  The kids ate mostly cereal, but it was fruit loops and other sugrary fun that we never have at our house.  After breakfast we packed up, and checked out of the hotel.  Today was our transition day from Portland to the Oregon coast.

The first stop of the day was to Voodoo Doughnuts.  I was told about this place by lots of people when I mentioned going to Portland.  It seems to be something of a local icon.  It is a strange place though.  I'll just go ahead and warn you, if you haven't already clicked on that link, I would be prepared for an onslaught of funny and sometimes risque themed doughnuts.  According to the people who suggested it, Voodoo Doughnuts nearly always has a 30 minute line.   That's pretty surprising for a doughnut place, or really for any restaurant, because 'nearly always' means 3am or 3pm.  It's open 24 hours and it's always busy.  We got their around 10 am, and true to form, I waited 35-40 minutes.  I didn't think that the line was going to be that bad.  There were perhaps 10-15 people ahead of me.  The line grew rapidly behind me and when I left there were probably 25 people in line.  The reason that the line takes so long to clear, is that everyone orders a lot of doughnuts.  The store has around 50 varieties of doughnuts, and people would order sometimes two dozen, individually specified.  So it just took forever. I didn't see this until I was very near the front.  But the two people ahead of me both ordered two dozen and had specific doughnuts that they wanted.  I only ordered six, and they were amazing.  Would I suggest that you go there?  It's tough.  They are fantastic doughnuts, but a 40 minute wait? That's a tough call. And it was only later that we realized we were there on National Doughnut Day.  That may have attributed to the extra wait- it would have been even longer if we had gotten there just a few minutes later, as the line was a lot longer when we left.  But the doughnuts were delicious.

After the doughnuts, we went downtown to Powell's Book.  This is a massive new and used book store.  It is an entire city block, and four stories high.  I think that the children's book area was at least as big as our local public library. I strapped Levi into our hiking backpack so that he would not go pulling everything off the shelves, and we hit the shelves.  I have never seen such a place.  There are just millions of books there.  The shelves were higher than any child, and probably many parents, were able to reach.  The whole place was also packed with a school field trip worth of 4th and 5th graders from some local Portland elementary school. I wanted to get an obscure children's astronomy book (the stars, by H.A. Rey). Harrison and Noah each found a section that interested them. Noah got several Junie B Jones books, which he loves.  Harrison got a Warriors guide book.  Mollie helped Olivia find some fun books.  This is definitely a place that we will revisit when we get to Portland again.

Our last stop in Portland before hitting the road was the Aerial Tram. This is like an inner city ski lift from one part of the OHSU campus to another up on the hill.  It was a quick ride that had great views.  The kids really enjoyed the views and the ride.

After that we headed out to the coast.  We drove west from Portland to Tillamook, stopping first at the Blue Heron restaurant.  Besides great sandwiches, they have several outdoor animals like chickens, ducks and goats. It was the perfect place to stop for an hour and let the kids run around.

 After that we went to the Tillamook cheese factory just down the road.  The kids love the factory tour and also the creamery.

We got everybody an ice cream cone and Mollie got some fun smoked cheddar cheese.

After falling off the bench of the cheese van, and hitting his head pretty good, Mollie hopped in van with Levi, who loved pretending to drive.

Back on the road we drove to Seaside, when we rolled into our hotel around 6 pm.  It was a very long day, so we just explored the room and went to bed.