We decided to stay another day in Portland and cut the long day into two pieces. Rich suggested Smith’s Rock state park north of Bend and so we packed up our stuff, left the truck, and headed back into Portland. This time instead of the boroughs, we were in the city center.
Our first stop was a huge bookstore called Powells. Apparently it’s famous. We had some coffee, chatted, looked at books and then left to find food or beer in some food trucks. We ran across the Deschutes Brewery and had some pretty good beer and then proceeded to the trucks.
Apparently Portland is filling itself in and building high-rise apartments in any place they can find. One block was famous for the food trucks, but recently was cleared and re-appropriated. We found some of the food trucks and had a pretty decent lunch before heading to our second stop at an outfitter store. We looked around and bought a couple of things.
Rich had to stop by a re-store to pick up some floor boards for his home (he’s re-doing the bathroom) so Carl and I waited for him across the street at The Mississippi Pizza Pub. Rich got his boards and then we headed back to the house, finished loading the truck and then Carl and I headed south-east.
We camped in a BLM area across from the state park. The juniper and weeded forest smelled kind of strange and took a bit to get used to. Something strange must have been blooming.