We're here! Despite the terrible weather in New York, we finally made it to Portland in the early hours of Saturday morning. My flight down from Toronto was delayed by about 2-3 hours due to the thunderstorms over New York, but luckily my connecting flight to Portland was also delayed by the same storms. Mark's luck was no better either. His outbound flight from the UK was delayed by about 1 1/2 hours and then he was stuck at JFK for over 6 hours waiting for the storms to subside. I think in total he had been up for about 30 hours when he finally arrived in Portland! Luckily all was fine tho, despite the delays, and we arrived and met Drew at the airport within minutes of each other.
The next day we took a trip up to the Columbia River gorge and the selection of waterfalls along the valley. Starting at Latourell Falls, we also saw Bridal Veil falls, Wahkeena Falls and Multnomah Falls, which was the biggest of the lot. It was an incredibly hot day, about 40c! After that, we were very sweaty so we went for a swim at Drew's girlfriends house.
In the evening, we met a friend of Drew's called Brandon and went to watch the 'soccer' match in town, Portland Timbers vs Montreal Impact. Portland won 2-1 on a terrible looking, artificial pitch. Highlight of the match was the Portland Timbers mascot, Timber Joe, wielding his chainsaw at any opportunity to get the crowd going. After the game, we headed back to Brandon's for food, then went back to Drew's to rest up before heading to Seattle in the morning.
Tim