Portland

Dinner with Scuba Friends

Friends are chocolate chips in the cookies of our lives. This applies to our friendship with Lynette Feder Yourish and David Yourish. I've known David since the early 80's as were in the same scuba club in Ft. Lauderdale. Lynette joined the club a few years later and they married a few years after that.

We had dinner at their house on Sunday and enjoyed being with them so much. They have 2 lovely daughters, Allya (14) and Zoe (7). Lynette is a professor at Portland State University. David works for a security software company and flies all over the country giving training. He had enough miles accumulated that the whole family flew to Greece for free!

Allya had already gone to a friend's house before we got out the camera so Lynette has promised to send me a photo of her - Lynette, don't forget!

Shopping and Football
Our RV park was about 25 miles south of Portland and the back gate opened up into a great Prime Outlet mall. On Monday, I hit the jackpot in Chico's - between the sale prices, no sales tax, and returning to pay on Tuesday morning so as to get the senior discount - and am pleased with my blouses and jeans. Ed and David discovered they both graduated from the University of Miami (a few years apart). David came over and they watched the Canes beat the Seminoles - in a very close game.

Downtown Portland

We stayed a day longer than we planned so we could go downtown on Tuesday. It's a really nice city with lots of trees and the trams are on electrical overhead cables so it was quiet. Lynette and David forgot to tell us about the greatest feature of all down there -- the food carts! Every ethnic food you could imagine is there. We had an appetizer at a Mediterranean place, then finally settled on a Thai place for lunch. I had a red curry chicken dish with mango and it was one of THE best things I've ever, ever eaten. They cooked it while we watched so it was piping hot and they gave generous portions...mmmm, makes my mouth water just to think about it.

This is our lunch being cooked.

We noticed/learned several things about Portland:

--It is in a valley with black, rich soil that was ideal for the many tree farms that we saw.
--We got diesel for the RV on Sunday but when we went to get gas for the car, an attendant came over. We figured we'd gotten into the full-service lane by accident. Turns out, there is a law in Oregon that only attendants can pump gas.
--Having no sales tax was pleasant.
--A town just south of Long Beach called Tillamook is known for it's dairy products. Lynnette and David introduced us to Mudslide - a flavor to die for! Ed bought some of their cheese last night and we already know it'll be good.