This begins a blog post about Caroline and John Wise traveling to Portland, Oregon, for a 5-day visit, which they so far have neglected to share. The reason is simple: I was in the throes of editing my book about the Grand Canyon. While there was still a need to get out and break out of the grueling routine of writing, I was not prepared back then to write anything else for fear of throwing me off my goal. Then, one day, Caroline asked me about which trip it was to Oregon that took us to the Spruce Goose, and she discovered that it had never been posted.

Now, here we are, ten years later, in the summer of 2021, and I’m once again going to try to frame some kind of recollection of where we were at the time and match some impressions to photographs. This will obviously be the easiest of days to write about as it’s 11:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and we are landing in Portland. We would have gone directly to a nearby motel, likely the Rodeway Inn, but not before raising a few eyebrows at the strange salute we received from this stick figure man.