Dog River Coffee Company

If you happen to be driving to Portland from Eastern Washington and you just cannot drive another hour without stopping (if you’ve got kids, you might know what I mean), Hood River is a good place to get out and stretch your legs. When we drove back to Portland after Thanksgiving, I was hoping to drive all the way to Portland without stopping. However, I was outvoted 3-1, so we pulled off the freeway and drove up to Oak Street, the main street in the touristy part of town. We parked and hopped out, looking for a café. Just up the street, beyond the absinthe bar, we spotted the Dog River Coffee company.  It looked like the type of place where we could get a little boost for the last leg of the trip (the café, not the bar).

Dog River Coffee 

For those of you who don’t know, Hood River is a small town about an hour’s drive east from Portland on I-84. It is located on the southern bank of the Columbia River and is a well-known destination for wind surfers who come to take advantage of the Columbia Gorge’s ever-present winds. It is also a popular place for people who are in transit to/from Mount Hood for camping, hiking or skiing. The downtown is geared for tourists and is full of small shops, restaurants and cafés. If you venture up the hill very far, the town offers some spectacular views of Mount Adams across the river to the north.

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Show Your Patriotism—Drink Coffee!

Today I want to bring you a little coffee history. I was reading Starbucked by Taylor Clark and one of the stories he tells about the history of coffee in America caught my eye. I thought I’d share it with you. But first, a little background (I promise there is a point to this story—it just takes a little while to get there).

I don’t know how many of you grew up drinking coffee before Starbucks became popular. It may be that for most of you, you never cared about coffee before the big green apron came along. I didn’t drink much coffee myself until fairly recently. To be honest, I don’t know if I ever went into a Starbucks before 2002. Growing up, I had an occasional cup after church (a Methodist tradition) maybe once a year, but I was never really what you would consider a coffee drinker. During high school, I remember some older friends telling me that there was no way anyone could make it through college without drinking coffee. They were wrong about at least one person.

My own personal connection with coffee really began in 2001 on a trip to Italy. While staying at a hostel (Casa Olmata) in Rome, we were given a ticket for a complimentary breakfast—a cappuccino and a croissant—at a nearby bar (café) that was across the street from Santa Maria Maggiore. We found the bar about 8am and walked in, a little unsure of ourselves. It was my first trip to the country and I couldn’t speak much Italian. We handed the tickets to the barista and he immediately set to work on the drinks. I stood there waiting, looking around and taking in everything around me.

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The Columbia Gorge on Ice

If you’re around the Pacific Northwest for very long, one thing you ought to do is take a drive through the Columbia River Gorge. It is a very scenic trip that rivals any other that America has to offer. My family and I drove up the Gorge for Thanksgiving this week, on the heels of this year’s first major winter storm. I was reminded how beautiful the Gorge can be. I was also reminded how temperamental it can be (at least the weather).

The Columbia River Gorge is one of America’s largest river channels. It was formed during the last ice age when the ice dam that formed Lake Missoula broke, causing one of the biggest, most intense floods the world has ever seen. Water rushed out of the lake and across Eastern Washington, digging a network of deep channels in the earth. According to the Montana Natural History Center, the flow of water was 60 times greater than the Amazon River, the largest river in the world. Sixty times! The wall of water rushed through the region and left behind a trove of geological features. It created wonders such as Palouse Falls, Dry Falls (which were 3.5 times as wide and twice as high as Niagara Falls), the Channeled Scablands and Wallula Gap The waters spread out like a giant hand across Eastern Washington, coming together at Wallula and raging their way to the Pacific Ocean. It would have been quite a scene to see, assuming you were standing on ground above the flood plain.

Quite the view

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The Undertown Café (Port Townsend, WA)

One of the joys of being a traveler is exploring new places. Of course, one of the frustrating things about traveling is that sometimes you can’t find what you’re looking for. When I go somewhere new, one of the things I always want to find is good espresso. Unfortunately, I have been to towns where you just cannot find good espresso, no matter how hard you look.

I recently traveled Port Townsend, Washington, located on the Olympic Peninsula at the mouth of Puget Sound. It was my first trip to the area, and when I got there I was really in the mood for some coffee. Seeking the wisdom of “the cloud”, I sent out a tweet asking if anyone knew of a good café in Port Townsend. Someone responded and told me that I should go to the Undertown Café. He did not elaborate much, but I still decided to take his recommendation and check it out.

The Undertown is underground

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Everything I Ever Wanted to Know about Jail

You never know who you're going to meet when you're traveling. A couple days ago, I mentioned that I was getting ready to take the bus back to Portland, hoping to find a good story. Here’s what happened.

The first leg of the trip, from Walla Walla to Pasco, was uneventful. We stopped in a couple small towns along the way—sometimes picking people up, sometimes not. That’s the biggest drawback to riding the bus—it can be pretty inefficient because you stop so often.

At Pasco, I had a layover of about 45 minutes. I wanted to get something to eat, but unfortunately, the Pasco station is not close to any restaurants.  With a backpack, a guitar and a heavy duffle bag, walking the mile back to the taco stands we had passed on the way to the station did not sound like fun, so I opted to just sit down on a bench to wait for my next bus to leave.

About five minutes later, a young guy came and sat down on the opposite end of the bench. He was in his early twenties and wore a black t-shirt, baggy jeans and a pair of well-worn black Air Jordan basketball shoes. He was about average height and had a medium build. It looked like at some point in his life he had lifted weights, but had not done so for quite a while. He wore his hair cropped very short and had not shaved in three or four days. He had someone’s name tattooed on his right wrist, and on the inside of his left forearm, a large raptor spread its wings. When he sat down, I got the sense that he wanted to talk. I made eye contact with him, which was all the encouragement he needed.

“Where you going?” he asked me.

“Portland. How about you?”

“I’m going to Spokane,” he replied. “I just got out of jail, and I’m getting the hell out of here!”

I knew right then that I had found my story.

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On the Road Again

We finished harvest yesterday (we were lucky to get done--it rained hard today), so tomorrow I will be returning to Portland after nine days in Dayton. To come back, I'm going to take the bus from Walla Walla to Portland. I had planned to catch the train in Pasco, but two things made me change my mind. The first is that the train leaves Pasco at 5:35am, which means that I would have to leave Dayton by 4am to make it on time. No thanks! The bus, on the other hand, departs from Walla Walla at 11:45, which means I don't have to leave Dayton until 10:45. Much, much better. I can use the extra sleep.

The second reason I decided to take the bus is that I think the bus will be more interesting than the train. As my friend Dave Schreck said today, when you ride the bus you get to see an "interesting slice of Americana." I agree. The people that ride the bus are a different crowd than the people who take the train, and I hope to run into someone with a fascinating story that I can share with you. Until then, happy Friday.

Coming back from China

When I passed through security and walked into Terminal 3 at the Beijing International Airport, it struck me that my adventure was coming to an end. The terminal was cool, clean and quiet, three adjectives that have little to do with the China I experienced. I sighed deeply, preparing for the journey ahead. I was excited to return home, but not necessarily looking forward to the next 24 hours on the move.

The trip had started out well. After a couple more difficult farewells, I hopped into a taxi to the airport.. There were no traffic jams and not even a line at the check-in desk (for a full flight on a 747!). The only thing that almost went wrong was when I got to the airport, I didn’t know what flight I was supposed to be on, and I couldn’t find any  flights to San Francisco on the monitors. For a minute, I thought maybe I was supposed to fly out at 4am instead of 4pm and had arrived 10 hours late. My fears were premature, however. The flights to SFO did show up on the monitor a few minutes later. Whew! Crisis avoided.

I had arrived at the airport two hours early, so I wandered around a little, checking out some of the luxury good for sale in the duty-free shops and eating an overpriced dish of fried rice that wasn’t half as good as what you could get in the shops in the city center. I knew I would miss good Chinese food, but I was also excited to get some good home cooking. Living without a kitchen was hard and with all the walking I did, I probably lost 10lbs on the trip.

My last meal in China...could have done better

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