Day 1 in Portland

Well, we weren't in the city proper for our first day in Portland. Since we were coming up from McMinnville, we had about an hour's drive back north. We started off with some exercise: another long nature walk, this time at Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge. One of the paths is open year-round, but the longer route is open in the summer, so we went with that choice. The first part of the walk is near a wetland, and we immediately saw great blue heron, Canada geese, ducks, and nutria! Steve had never heard of nutria before, so that was extra-cool for him. But after that part of the walk, we didn't see many animals (we did see a small snake cross our path), but we did hear more birds. If only we had binoculars with us!

This is a nutria. He was so calm, just munching away.

After our good long walk, we got back in the car to continue our trip north, this time to the Oregon Zoo. I mainly wanted to go to the zoo because I have been following their new baby elephant, Tula Tu, on Instagram. She is just so cute, and I had to see her in person! (Much like I had to see baby hippo Fritz at the Cincinatti Zoo a few years ago. Check out that blog post here.)

We saw so many cool animals, and not just those in owned by the zoo! We heard pileated woodpeckers, and we saw an Anna's hummingbird flitting from flower to flower for lunch. So cool! Here are some fun animal pics:

This monkey had a toy mirror, and he certainly enjoyed his reflection!

This young puma had to work for her lunch!

Once we were done at the zoo, we still had about an hour on the meter left (you have to pay for parking at the zoo, boo!). Since the Hoyt Arboretum is right across from the zoo, we thought we'd take a short walk there. We mainly checked out the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which was special. 57,000 people from Oregon went to Vietnam during the conflict. That's a lot of people from just one state. 

We finally headed to our hotel after that, quickly cleaned up, and headed out for happy hour. Several places didn't offer happy hour, or it had already ended by the time we got there (one place has happy hour from 2-4pm. How does anyone with a job make it there?). We ended up trying a couple things at Beer O'Clock (Tommy the bartender was very helpful with recommendations for the rest of our trip) before going to Jake's Grill for dinner. Jake's was recommended to us previously, and with the coupon for a free appetizer that the hotel gave us, it was a no-brainer. And because we had already made the reservation noting our one-year anniversary, we got a free dessert, too! Not a bad way to close out a busy day.

Jake's personalized our menus!

Steve had seen this chocolate cake pass by earlier, and we had to try it! Best part of the meal!