Evidence

I know it's been ages since I posted. There's been a lot of stuff happening. In short we went to Portland, OR at the end of July to collect further evidence that we should move there. And now we are packing up our apartment in Chicago and will be moving across the country for the third (and hopefully last) time very very soon. Okay, so we pretty much had our mind made up before our trip, but take a look at what we found there:

Day one we stumbled onto the Oregon Brewers Festival. We had been so preoccupied with planning our trip (not as tourists but as people about to move there) that we hadn't spent any time looking into events or fun activities. But that's okay, Portland took care of us. Even though it was the last day and they seemed dangerously close to running out we managed to get our 2.5 cups each of tasty tasty beer. I was partial to the Fearless Scottish Ale. It was a wonderful, laid-back event with occasional outbreaks of "Wooo!" Someone would start shouting "Woo!" and if it was a good one the rest of the crowd would raise their glass and join in. I did not start any rounds of cheers, maybe next year. Chuck observed that women seemed to be more successful at starting the cheers than men.

There is a vegan strip mall in Portland. It contains Sweetpea Baking Co., Herbivore Clothing, Food Fight and even a vegan tattoo parlor. We made at least 3 trips to the bakery; the danish was fantastic as was all the chocolate-y peanut butter goodness Chuck ate. And lunch there was great too. Of course there is plenty of vegan friendliness all over the city. Voodoo Doughnut has a separate vegan menu. We ate at a sandwich shop called The People's Sandwich of Portland where the signature sandwich ("the people's sandwich") is vegan. I even had vegan corn dogs. Not that I've ever really had much interest in having vegan corn dogs...it's not something I've missed. But I felt I had to try it for novelty's sake. They were everything you would expect of corn dogs without the nasty hot dog (I believe it was a tofu dog instead.)

Portland has parks of all shapes and sizes. The one pictured above is Director Park, which was completed recently. All of these parks and plazas seem very well used at all times of day, just look at all those kids playing in the fountain! This was on a weekday afternoon. There are also the Park Blocks and Waterfront Park, which I can't wait to see next spring when the cherry trees are in bloom! I also found myself taking lots of pictures of trees. They are large and impressive and I have really missed the size and types of trees in the Northwest.

So we are wrapping up our time in Chicago, packing things into boxes. On that note, I am having a moving sale in the Etsy shop until Aug. 17th, when things start going into the truck.