The wrong way to Portland: Music, Wine, Family

We planned an easy trip to Portland, driving from Eureka, CA to Grant’s Pass, OR on Friday afternoon and on to Portland on Saturday. We’d drive four hours each day. The road winds through the forests of far northern California, and straightens out in Oregon at Interstate 5.

It’s been just long enough since we last made this drive that I forgot the only important caveat to the journey–there is no cell service for most of the first day’s route. A road map is helpful, a route saved off-line on your phone, or a copy printed on paper. Without this kind of backup, we got well into our drive before realizing that we’d failed to make a turn at Willow Creek.

Here’s what happened:

L: The route we planned to take

C: The route we should have taken in the first place.

R: The route we took

Right about when we got to Gazelle, CA and had a gorgeous view of Mount Shasta, we wished we’d gone via the coast route, foregone the views and had time to sip wine at the Riverside Inn’s happy hour.

We arrived at our motel at about 6:30 pm rather than four-ish, pretty tired and grumpy. The Riverside Inn seems perfectly nice, but we were in the “cottage”, a room attached to the breakfast room, away from the main building, and dark outside. We were concerned about parking our car in the otherwise empty parking area. Fortunately, nothing happened. We stopped at the hot breakfast included with our room. I was torn between making my own waffle, and biscuits and gravy, so that was a good start to the day.

We hit the road to Portland, thinking how much shorter the drive would be. Just north of Salem, however, our directions showed multiple car crashes and a lengthy backup on our route. I directed us to an alternate route–my next mistake. The back road became crowded and was full of twists and turns. After a hour, we finally made it back to the highway and realized we should have just stayed on the highway. The road was indeed closed, but only in the opposite direction.

Still, we got to Portland by about 4 pm, with time for a short rest before heading to an early dinner at Rocio’s, a Mexican restaurant just around the corner from my sister Paula, with whom we stayed.

The rest of the trip is all good news. We went to two concerts. Saturday night’s was, In Mulieribus, (Among Women, in Latin). The group is eight professional singers featuring music written before 1750. They’ve added pieces written by women composers in recent years, and the music was ethereal and lovely. The contemporary music fit in surprisingly well with the ancient pieces, and the director, Anna Song, gets high marks for the selection.

Strangely, though, the program was called Songs of Loss and Lamentation, with a program cover of a classical statue of a drooping woman. Who would go to a concert with that title? We went because Paula is on the board, and were surprised and delighted at the excellent concert. It should have been titled Songs of Hope and Renewal, but I guess no one looked closely at the title and thought about the impression it might make.

The next afternoon at 4 pm, we attended the Oregon Repertory Singers concert, in which Paula sang along with the other 119 members of the group. The program was a bit out of the ordinary, a single piece, Rachmaninoff’s “All Night Vigil” Vespers. It has 15 sections, making a 90 minute concert without an intermission. I could imagine it as an overnight vigil, with a group singing one section every half hour from 11 pm until morning. The group sang in Russian, and it was a fine concert of a piece not often performed. We enjoyed it thoroughly.

On the plus side, the concert was over in time to make a stop at home before going to dinner at Sushi and Maki, a delicious sushi place on SE 32nd Ave. in Portland. The good food kept on coming. On Monday night, Wayne cooked ribs on his Traeger and they came out lightly smoked and falling off the bone tender, accompanied by cornbread and salad.

Tuesday was wine tasting day, and we visited Paula’s two wine club vineyards, Drouhin and Trisaetum. At both places, she’s on a first name basis with the host, and we were treated well. We tasted all the wine we possibly could, and Paula collected her quarterly allotment. On the drive back into town, we decided to eat dinner out and ended up with a reservation at Nostrada, which has excellent food. We were a bit surprised to find that there is a mandatory 22% tip added to every tab, especially when our server made it clear the 22% was shared, and if we wanted to leave him personally a tip, we could do that. We decided that we had contributed enough, delicious as it all was. Have you had this experience?

Wednesday we left Portland for home, stopping overnight in Gold Beach, Oregon. We walked on the beach, had dinner at a local spot and enjoyed a quiet night. The last leg of our trip went through Crescent City, CA, where we stopped to do some beachcombing, found some beach glass, and some agates. It was a really nice break on the drive.

We were glad we went to Portland, and we were glad to be home again.