Day 2 in Portland

You can see not one but two reservoirs from Mt. Tabor.

Another beautiful day in the Pacifici Northwest! After working out at the gym and eating our free breakfast at the Hampton Inn, we took a short drive to Mount Tabor, an extinct volcano just outside of the downtown area. Now that we live in Florida, we never see any elevation changes, so it was fun to get some real hiking in!

Can you spy the Great Horned Owl?

After our walk, several of the distilleries I wanted to visit weren't open yet, so we went over to Misssissippi Avenue, which I heard was a cool part of town. There are a lot of restaurants and cute shops, and of course I had to try Kate's ice cream!

Then we drove back across the river to the Slabtown neighborhood, where we had drinks and lunch at Brujos, a local brewery that came recommended. From there were could walk to several distilleries, but two of the three were closed for Juneteenth. So we ended up at Freeland Spirits. Their gin was very good!

"Brujos" means "witches," so there was a spooky theme with cocktail "spells."

Inside the brewery is a taco place, and we were not disappointed.

Freeland was really leaning into Pride, and they have all different colored bottles/spirits!

After all that, we took a little break in the room before heading out again for the evening. We had heard that Portland has a big food cart scene, so we went to the Hawthorne Asylum food carts pod for dinner. There is one main bar, but there are lots of carts to choose from of many different cuisines. I ended up getting a chicken platter from Oh Yum; the photo made it look Mexican with half an avocado, roasted corn, and black beans, but it wasn't like that at all. It was more like a Greek shawarma platter. Still yummy, but I wouldn't have paid $17 had I known it didn't actually come with half an avocado! Steve waited in the longest line for jambalaya, but he was happy with his choice.

There was a large fire pit (not lit that day) where you could sit among all the food trucks.

Right around the corner was the Helium Comedy Club, and I had bought tickets to see Ted Alexandro there before we even left for the trip. We had seen him open for Jim Gaffigan in Savannah, so we already were familiar with his material. It was a fun show, even with some rocky jokes in the beginning, and the venue is so small that there are no bad seats in the house. It was a fun way to spend the evening before going back to the hotel for the night.