Today was one of those days where it felt like maybe we were in verge of pulling out one too many Jenga blocks (re: attempting to do too many “things”), BUT we are at the house in Portland to wind down the day and the tower didn’t topple – we all had a great day!

Woke up in Hood River to pack for our last transition to Portland. We had breakfast at Freshies (bagels and smoothies – boys requested something other than Broder Ost, but William and I would have fully gone back). We got on the road a bit after 10am with a plan to hit a couple of must do spots on the way into Portland.

First up – Multnomah falls – an impressive falls with a short hike off of the Columbia River highway. Essentially you pull off at the exit to walk under the highway and you can walk to the base, the bridge or the very top of the falls, depending on your energy level. We knew we wanted to do a different hike, so we walked up to the bridge vantage point. Really beautiful spot:

We drove from here to the trailhead for Latourell Falls – bit of a deviation (trust alltrails for trailhead starts, never trust Google Maps 😉

While we’d heard Multnomah is the most impressive falls, the lower Latourell falls are (personal opinion) the most beautiful! Went on the roughly 3mi loop here and it was fully worth it.

After this stop, we went by Vista house – the museum isn’t currently open, but the view isn’t closed.

From here we went to Sugar Pine drive in. Will say the previous stops were fully as gorgeous as the pictures. Sugar Pine is clearly a local and visitor fave with a retro drive in feel but really inventive food offerings. The thing missed in the pics below is that it was utterly insane crowded from a parking perspective. If you can go in the middle of the week (mom and dad!), wld absolutely recommend.  But seriously do you expect smoked trout and salmon rillette toast with all the fresh things from a drive-in?

From here, we made our way into Portland, heading to Cari’s favorite local market, New Seasons. Brief grocery run, checked into our home for the week and quick turn around for dinner. 
We went to OK Omens, one of the Portland restaurants that has converted its entire operations to outdoor cabanas. S loved the Dungeness crab, Rawls the cheddar beignets and burgers and the roasted carrots/maiitake mushrooms won me and William over!