Hi Guys. I had a surprise visit from a friend of a friend this week. His name is Flat Stanley and he is visiting from Texas. I’m asking him to guest blog this entry so he can tell you what he’s been up to in Portland.
Hi Olivia and the rest of you guys in Ms. Isbell’s class! How’s Texas? I’m having a great time traveling. I’m here in Portland, Oregon which has been interesting . A big change from Dallas, you know. I got here last week and it has rained almost every day since I’ve been here. Terrell says it hardly rains at all in the summer but in the winter you can pretty much plan on rain at least part of every day. She’s happy that it doesn’t snow very often, though. Usually only a couple of times every winter. We did have one really warm and sunny day last week (Terrell says it was VERY unusual) so we grabbed the chance to get out and see a little bit of Portland.
Terrell says it’s easy to find your way around the city if you just remember a couple of things. First, there are two rivers. One of them runs east to west along the top edge of the city and it’s called the Columbia. South of the Columbia is Oregon but if you go across to the northern bank you’re in Washington State. The city on that side is called Vancouver just like the city in Canada. They’re both named after the same guy. The other river, The Willamette, runs north right through the middle of Portland. All the streets east of the river have east in their name. All the streets on the west say west. The other thing to remember is that there is a long street called Burnside that runs east and west and splits the town into north and south. All the streets north of Burnside say north and all the streets south say south. So the river and Burnside divide the city into quarters, northeast (that’s where Terrell lives) southeast, northwest and southwest. It’s kind of like the Land of OZ. Terrell says if I remember about the rivers and Burnside, I’ll never get lost. Sweet! Here’s a map so you can see what I mean. The blue balloons are some of the places we went on our day out.
View Flat Stanley in a larger map
So, back to the sunny day. We left the house about 11:00 in the morning to walk to the light rail station. The shadows were so long I got Terrell to take a picture to show you. She says in the winter, the days here are much shorter than in Dallas and that the sun sits really low in the southern sky so there are long shadows all day long not just in the morning and evening. That’s because Portland is so much further north than Dallas. Maybe Ms. Isbell can explain that better. The train station is only about 10 minutes’ walk from Terrell’s house. She says people try to use mass transit (like trains and buses) and bikes (it’s called the most bikeable city in America) and walking as much as possible here. Everybody is really into “green” living. Almost everybody who has a yard near Terrell has a garden and grows organic vegetables and they’re very careful about things like recycling and energy use.

We rode the train across the river (met a couple of nice people on the train), through downtown and into a tunnel that went through one of the western hills. We got out at a stop that was underground and rode the elevator up to the surface. We came out almost on the top of the hill next to the zoo and the Children’s Museum. It was such a pretty day that we decided to go for a little hike through the arboretum. An arboretum is kind of like a zoo for trees. They have as many kinds as they can and they have signs on each one to tell you what they are. Terrell says this one has way more trees than the arboretum in Dallas. Since we were on top of the hill there were lots of good views. At one place we could see Mt. Saint Helens and Mt Rainier. Mt. Rainier is a long ways away, almost to Seattle, so she said we had really good visibility to be able to see so far. Both those mountains and the one we saw later, Mt. Hood are really volcanoes. Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980 and blew its top off so it’s not as pointy as the other volcanoes.

After the hike we took a bus to the Japanese Garden. It’s really famous. People come from all over to see it. Terrell tried hard to explain about Japanese art and why the garden looks like it does but I’m not sure I really got it. She says that there are lots of Asian-Americans who live in Portland and all along the Pacific Northwest Coast so it’s important to know about their history and culture. The Chinese came here a long time ago to work on the railroads and the Japanese came because of the good farm land. Now days, a lot of the people coming here are from Vietnam. It makes for an exciting mix of people and cultures. Anyway, I thought the leaves were pretty. People sure were taking a lot of pictures. Here I am with Terrell in front of a Japanese maple tree.

After the Japanese garden we walked down the hill to another garden where there were lots of roses. Terrell says that Portland is nicknamed the City of Roses. During the summer, you can see roses blooming just about everywhere and they have a big rose festival with parades and queens and everything. This garden is even more famous than the Japanese garden. It has over 7000 rose bushes! Terrell said when she came here in the early summer, she met people from seven different countries. After the rose garden we walked down the hill through Washington Park all the way to town. We went past some really nice houses and neighborhood called “Uptown” where Terrell said a lot of the cool kids live just like in Dallas. We passed the baseball stadium that will also be the home of the new Major League Soccer team next year.
Terrell said that for lunch we really needed to eat at a food cart. I didn’t think that sounded very good but she explained that the food carts of Portland are a local phenomenon. She’s not sure how they got started but now they are all over the city. A bunch of them will be clustered together (they call this a “pod” of food carts) usually at the edge of a parking lot. Each cart is like a little restaurant. Most of them have one or two tables on the sidewalk and a lot of them serve really, really good food. Terrell said that you can think of just about any food in the world and there will probably be a food cart in Portland that serves it. Texas BBQ, Vietnamese Pho, French Crepes, Argentinean Empanadas…it’s like a huge outdoor food court. Terrell and I split a doner wrap from a cart called Ali Baba’s that serves Turkish food. Terrell had a good time talking to the owner about his home town, Istanbul, and her favorite parts of Turkey. He even gave her a free cup of Turkish tea. She said it was really good.

After lunch we kept walking through downtown until we got to the river. There’s a nice park there with a walkway along the water and lots of grass and trees. The weather was so nice that a lot of people were sitting on the grass and enjoying the sun. Terrell says, who knows, it might be the last time until next summer! We were watching some little boats and jet skis out on the river when alarm bells on the bridge close to us went off. I was a little worried but Terrell told me it was just that the bridge was about to open to let a big boat go up the river. We got to watch the draw bridge go up and the barge go through. Terrell even made a little video so I could show you.

We had walked a really long ways at this point so we climbed the stairs up to the beginning of the bridge on Burnside and caught the bus home. I was really tired but it was a great day. I can see why Terrell likes it here even though it rains so much.
Hey Olivia (Terrell talking again). Thanks for sending Stanley to visit me. You can see more pictures from our day out on Flickr. Just click here. I wish I could have taken him around more. There’s so much more to see around Portland. We could have gone to see the vineyards down in the Willamette Valley or to the beach since the Pacific Ocean is only about an hour or so away. In another week or two we could have gone snowshoeing or snowboarding up on Mt. Hood. I just started two new jobs, though, so I’ve been really busy. I’m excited to have these jobs since I’ve been looking for work for almost a year. One problem with a place as nice as Portland is that a lot of people want to live here and there aren’t really enough jobs to go around. Anyway, I’m sending Stanley on to his next destination. I’m sure you’ll hear from him again soon!