Well, travel followers, we are on our way (or at least we will be in about three hours). The October Bunch (us, my brother, his bride Jamie and our good friends Mike and Cathy from way down in Florida) is on the road again. And for the next few days, it will actually be a road trip.

Steve and Jamie arrived last Thursday, and we have been feeding them well and showing them a little of Seattle and Redmond since then. Last night we met up with our kids and grandkids for dinner. This afternoon, we will drive to Portland, and Mike and Cathy will fly in later tonight (like REALLY LATER tonight, like 11:45 pm). We will all finally be together tomorrow morning for a food tour in downtown Portland.

We will spend the next four days touring northwest Oregon before we board American Cruise Line’s Harmony to sail both up and down the Columbia and Snake rivers for a week, stopping in Kalama, Astoria, The Dalles, The Tri-Cities and finishing up in Clarkston, Washington, on the far east side of the state. Once we are off the ship/boat, we will spend two nights in Washington’s wine country by staying in Walla Walla, a place so nice, they named it twice.

While in Portland, we will do a day trip to the coast, out the Columbia Gorge and around Mount Hood, south to the Oregon wine region and then spend some time discovering Portland. Here’s a map of the entire trip.

Since you can’t blow it up (because it’s a screenshot of a Google Map), I’ll explain that the cruise part of the ship starts here in Portland. I started this post while at home, but we are now in Portland after a four-hour drive, which is why it seems like I have changed locations since I began writing. All purple dots with ships on them are the ports for the cruise. The loop out to the coast and up the Columbia are places we are going pre-cruise, and then we stop in Walla Walla post-cruise. 

To break it down for you, we will be spending tonight through Friday at the Embassy Suites by Hilton at PDX (Portland International Airport). We didn’t really pick this hotel. The cruise line puts us up at this hotel on Friday night, and we sail on Saturday, so it serves as our base of operations until then. We really didn’t want to move from someplace else for one night.. 

Tomorrow, we are doing a food tour in the morning, followed by a visit to the Portland (City of Roses) Rose Garden, and a few other Portland favorites. Stay tuned for more updates in the days ahead.

Portland has all the accoutrements of a big city, but the heart and soul of it is a small town, so that creates an intimacy in a large environment.  —DEAN DEVLIN