Oregon Outings On My American Adventures

Last updated on 6 July 2024

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Oregon is such a stunning state.

I’ve only been to six of fifty states in America, but Oregon and Washington states I’m sure are some of the most beautiful. Oregon’s streets are lined with trees, every mountain a blur of green, each spare inch of land dotted with spruce and pine. It’s really like exploring a forest that happens to have buildings every so often, rather than the other way around. Washington is the same.

If you missed it, I’ve just come back from just under two weeks in this part of the world, and I have a lot of photos and stories to share with you guys about my adventures. For the next couple of weeks I’ll be dotting posts about my trip along with the usual book reviews and other adventures, but I thought I’d start today with some photographs from Oregon, and a little about our trip.

Our American adventure

My family consists of me, two sisters, mum and dad. The last overseas holiday we had together was back at the end of 2013, as we popped down to Paris from England for a few days. We did actually spend five days in Hong Kong on the way back to New Zealand, but Paris was our last ‘planned holiday’, if you see what I mean. This time round we were all going to Portland to visit extended family in the area. We hired a car so we would have a little more freedom, and ended up driving 2,033km around both Oregon and Washington.

The first day we headed out to Cannon Beach, then visited Astoria, then spent the weekend back in Portland area. Then we went north to Seattle for two days, then back down to Portland for the remainder of the trip. I’ll post about those other places soon, but till then here’s a little look at our time in the Portland area.

The Columbia River

We were staying with family near the Columbia River, so took a walk through a beautiful reserve full to bursting with bird life and other critters. In New Zealand we really only have native birds and some Australian imports; minus a few stoats here and there, a possum or two, we don’t really have any wild animals other than birds. Seeing deer just hanging about in the reserve was amazing, as was seeing a family of nutria (a creature I had literally never heard of – think Rodents of Unusual Sizes from The Princess Bride). They are like huge water rat things. We were lucky to see a wee family nest tucked into the grasses. Alas, I couldn’t get a better photo than the one below.

We were also told by about 10 different bird-watchers as we went by that there was ‘a mink in that log!!’ … we still didn’t see it. And yes, I had to google what a mink looked like.

From the river you get a stunning view of Mount Hood, but not just from the river. Nearly everywhere we went in the region you could spot the mountain. Coming from a country full of volcanoes and towering peeks, having that point of reference and that sense of awe every time you see it is jsut part of who we are, I think. When my extended family live in the Mid-West of America, namely around the Chicago area, there was nothing on the horizon. It was empty. Void of mountains or hills.

Oregon is so much better. Sorry, Chicago. Mountains beat sprawling city any day.

Portland City

You can read more about Portland city from my last visit here, but this time we were really there for one reason: Powell’s Books. While this time round I’m not going to be sharing about my trip to Powell’s, you can read about it here. We also popped into VooDoo Donuts and spent some time down by the water’s edge.

Stay tuned for more posts from my adventures!