Portland

Ray and I hired a car and went up to Portland for a couple of days.


We stopped at an Indian casino on the way. Gambling is illegal in Oregon except on Tribal land. The sculpture in the photo below is a huge bronze, it was inspiring to think of the work involved in a project of that size.






The scenery was awesome, lots of wide valleys bordered by mountains. Along the way we passed towns like Hugo.










Allegedly there was once a mining town called Waldo - it now seems to have disappeared.




Portland has an interesting road network.











While in Portland we went to Powells world of books, which was absolutely awesome. I think it is the only bookstore I have been to where they give you a map when you walk in. They also had frequent loudspeaker announcements asking identified people to re-unite with their group at specified locations. As expected, I bought too many books.



This is possibly the biggest flag I have ever seen.











Apparently the Americans are well beyond us in terms of IT technology: I've never even heard of the inernet but would like to find out what it does. Drop me a line if you know, please!











Some of the coffee shops in the US give free refills on coffee, so you only need to pay for the first cup. I'm keeping an eye out for bars that operate the same way with cheap beer / wine.