Day 12 - Medford to Portland
The Plan (the whole Plan)
Day #12 : Tue 20 May : Portland. Beer.
So we set off from the dog-hole that is Medford, to look for the wineries
of southern Oregon .. and look ... and look. We had found a map
purporting to show the locations of several such establishments, but as
we explored what were apparently the lanes depicted on the map, we found
neither hide nor hair of such beasties as we scoured the Applegate valley.
Well, that's not strictly true - we saw loads of vines, but the
wineries with tours available, the tasting rooms, and so on - no sign at
all.
Back
on the interstate and head north. And then after a bit of exploring
in the next valley, we found what we were looking for. In spades,
in fact. Philippe Girardet, an elderly Swiss with a twinkle in his
eye, runs a
winery
in the Umpqua valley, and took us through his extensive
and reasonably-priced inventory. Suitably fortified by a good measure
of M. Girardet's product (except for Rupert, who had to drive - ha! ha!)
and a large picnic in the sun, we were ready to face the long journey north.
And
so to Portland. We found lodgings on the other side from downtown
of one of Portland's many spectacular bridges. It was too late to
do much other than wander across the bridge, marvel at the many forms of
(free) public transport we saw en route, ... oh, and find our way
to the Rogue Brewery's large outlet to see if it could provide us with
a good drop. We got into converstaion with a guy who looked like
Zeke out of Doonesbury, and ... oh, hell, you don't want to read
about us getting pissed again. We'd show you a couple of Patrick's
night-scene photographs, but they're all a bit crap and out of focus for
some reason. We'll be better-behaved tomorrow, honest. Oh,
and we're off to Mount St Helen's, so there should be some good pictures
too...
