We had to travel from Tillamook (on the coast of Oregon) into Portland yesterday for a vet visit due to Laddy’s heart condition. Our vet is Banfield which is a nationwide chain and works well for us as Laddy’s records can be accessed from any location.
But, Portland is 1.5 hours away! So, we jumped into the truck with some snacks and plenty of water and headed inland. As is normal nowadays we dropped Laddy off and were told we’d be called when we could pick him up. They estimated 4 hours! Like most every business they are short staffed and doing the best that they can.
So, we drove around a little bit, parked in a nearby lot for a while, and then took a drive to a Panera for lunch. Afterwards we went back to the parking lot and just hung out till it was time to pick up Laddy.
Three things I noticed about Portland:
- their road and freeway system is weird! I’m used to driving in big cities, having worked in downtown San Diego for many years, but Portland is just weird. Lots of one way streets which isn’t a problem for us, but to get to a freeway we had to go right for a block, left for two blocks, right, left, up, down, in, out, it just was not straightforward or simple. We had the same situation getting to the Panera which was near the airport. We actually had to go into the airport, circle the parking structure, come back out again, go past the Panera to be able to turn left and circle back around again. At one point going from the Panera back to the vet we changed from one state highway to another and had to exit and travel several blocks in a residential area, left and another left and back through several blocks just to get to the next highway. Just weird!
- The homeless situation in Portland is very bad. In the downtown areas there are tents and tarps and piles of junk everywhere! The temperate climate must attract a lot of people. The bad part about the situation is the trash that the homeless people leave blowing around everywhere near them. You can always tell when there’s a homeless encampment nearby because of the large amount of trash along the road, on the embankments along the freeways, etc.
- We’ve heard a lot in the past several months about the violent protests going on in Portland. In a facebook group I belong to for full time RVers I’ve actually seen people ask if it’s safe to go to Portland because of all the violence. Hm…we saw 4 people in BLM tshirts holding signs on 2 street corners. That’s all. I know there were some large protests and at least one turned violent (because of ANTI BLM protesters who crashed the party) but we saw a very calm and quiet city.
And, luckily, Laddy vet appointment didn’t give us any bad news. He’s 12 years old and has a heart failure condition called DCM (dilated cardio myopathy) so he’s on medications and has to be kept from exerting himself but he’s a happy good boy.
That’s it from our day in Portland!
Here’s a couple of pictures of Portland, I didn’t take these I got them from the internet:
