When I climb out of the camper this morning, it's warm and sunny...it's already a beautiful summer day. I make coffee in the French press and set up my satellite radio to listen to the news. As I enjoy my coffee and a morning cigar, several of my fellow campers stop by to say hello...they're out this morning walking their dogs or otherwise enjoying a morning stroll.
I'm enjoying my stay here at the Rolling Hills RV Park. The facilities are clean, the residents friendly and, as I'll explain later, the location is excellent for my purposes.
When my cigar and coffee are finished, I'm off to the showers...emerging a half hour later clean, shaven and dressed in a fresh change of clothes.
Around 10:00AM, I head out to Boyd's Coffee Company. I bought my coffee grinder and my coffee maker online from Boyd's several years ago. Now, as it turns out, their store is less than half a mile from my campground. Somewhere along the way on this trip, I've lost the filter basket to my electric coffee maker, and Boyd's has a replacement...only $8.00.
Before I head to downtown Portland for the day, I make a call to the City of Fairview. I'm not buying the "story" that I got when I tried to check in at the Portland Fairview RV Park...that there is a city ordinance that forbids them from accepting any RV that is not equipped with a "black water tank". It doesn't take me long to confirm that there is, in fact, no such ordinance. The RV Park has made this up and lied to me. If they had just told me that they don't accept teardrop campers, I might have accepted that. But it's the lying that has me "steamed". Later today, I'll take some steps to take care of this.
The drive to downtown Portland is only twelve miles or so. In fact, all of the places that I've visited in Portland have all been relatively close to my campground.
Once downtown, I find a good place to park and set out explore the city. I walk for hours, stopping along the way for a glass of wine, a bite to eat. There's a nice wine tasting place downtown and, in addition to a glass of wine, I pick up a city map and a map of wine country where I'll be heading on tomorrow. I'm hungry for oysters, so I make a stop at the Dan & Louis Oyster Bar...a Portland "institution".
My plan is to have lunch at several of the many food trucks for which Portland is renown, so I'm just ordering a small portion of oysters at my first stop. But when the waiter brings me my small platter of fried oysters, he tells me that the chef thinks that they might be fried a little "dark"...so he's frying me up a second batch. With a few glasses of Pinot Gris, it's a good lunch...but now I'm pretty full as I head out for the food trucks.
There are food trucks all over the city, but the major concentration is on Adler between 9th and 10th Streets. There are at least thirty some trucks parked there, and they're serving up just about every type of cuisine that you could imagine...Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Indian, German, Italian, and on and on. There are grilled cheese sandwiches, pork sandwiches, soups, snacks, vegan dishes, doughnuts, ice cram...just about anything that you could want. Many of the trucks have signs touting their appearance on the Food Channel or their mention in Bon Appetit/Food & Wine/Saveur magazines.
I get an order of pork potstickers...five for $2.00. They're excellent. Later, I get an order of Thai chicken and rice...also excellent (and only $4.00). Later still, I have some Indonesian sate (four skewers for $3.00).
Now I've got to walk off my "lunch", so I continue to walk the downtown from one end to the other. I stop here and there for a glass on wine or to sit for awhile in one of the many nice parks downtown. The hotel where I stayed in 2008, the Vintage Plaza, is still there as is my favorite little "super-divey" bar, Kelly's Olympian.
Around 4:00PM, I'm done for the day and head back to my campground. There, I post to the blog, clean out and reice the coolers...a few more "maintenance" items. I haul out the netbook, get online and post negative reviews of Portland Fairview RV Park on Yahoo!, Google, Yelp and Trip Advisor. I also file a complaint directly with Good Sam Club.
I had planned to go out tonight for one last meal in Portland but, after today's "food tour", I'm just not hungry enough for a big meal. Two leftover slices of Ken's pizza are more than enough to tide me over.
Around 8:00PM, I make the five-minute walk out of the Park and over to C.J.'s Pub...my new favorite bar. It's a nice cozy little place...very friendly atmosphere. The bartender, Cheryl, is cute, bright and an easy conversationalist. If I had a sister, I think that she would be like Cheryl. Tonight, the beers are going down easy again (real easy). Before I know it, it's almost midnight...time for the walk back to camp and bed.
It has been a really good day.
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