PNW Trip: Day 4 - Portland, Here We Come!

We woke up at 5am to a horrible buzzing sound. I thought it was the air conditioner, and I guess L did, too, because I noticed him get up and check it. He pulled back the curtain and peeked outside, then walked over the door. When he opened it, the buzzing became shrieking and flashing lights entered our room. It was the fire alarm! We put on shoes and jackets, I grabbed my purse and he grabbed his camera bag, and we headed outside with the other guests. Luckily, there was no fire and we only had to wait outside for about 15-20 minutes.



At 8:30, we woke up (again) to start driving toward Portland. Back on I-84 West. Just before we crossed the border, we stopped at a produce stand on the Idaho side.





We picked up some peaches and plums to add to our cooler stash.


We stopped in Baker City, OR at a Taco Time for lunch, which is L's favorite fast-food restaurant. This is something that he really misses from when he briefly lived in Washington and I knew how eager he was to eat there again. I was a little hesitant, for obvious vegan reasons, but after asking a few questions of the cashier, I was able to order a veggie burrito, no cheese, no sour cream.



It sucked. I mean, accidentally-vegan burritos at places like this (Taco Bell, Taco John's) are never good. They're greasy, they're salty, they're missing something. I did not feel good nor satisfied from this burrito. One good thing I can say is that their salsa verde is good and made it easier for me to eat this burrito. Meanwhile, L was having an emotional experience with his definitely not-vegan burritos. There may or may not have been tears.

On the road again.


I hope they made it!

Right outside of Portland is Multnomah Falls. Even though it was raining, I am SO GLAD that we stopped here. I LOVE waterfalls and have seen many in my day, but Multnomah is now my favorite. I don't have very many pictures (due to the rain), but they wouldn't do this place justice, anyway. You just need to go here because it's beautiful.



The Legend of the Multnomah Falls (not to be confused with Legend of the Fall, starring Brad Pitt)
There are reportedly various Native American legends that explain the creation of Multnomah Falls, but one in particular is the most often related. The story concerns the union of a beautiful, young maiden from the Multnomah tribe with a young chief of the nearby Clatsop tribe. After their marriage was complete, the two tribes were joined in harmony and celebration, but the Great Spirit suddenly became angry and decided to unleash a vicious disease that quickly spread throughout the population.

As the tribe elders gathered to try and understand the Great Spirit's anger, an old medicine man stepped forward and spoke of a prophecy that he had been told as a young man. He had been told that the day would come when the people would become sick due to the anger of the Great Spirit. The only way to appease his anger was for a young maiden to climb to the high cliff and throw herself upon the rocks below as a sacrifice. The tribe was consulted and informed of the prophecy, but they decided to die honorably rather than sacrifice one of their own.

The recently married maiden considered saving her people, but given her happiness over her recent marriage, she wanted to live. However, the young Clatsop chief too became ill and she realized that the only way for him to live was for her to offer herself in sacrifice to the Great Spirit. At night, she snuck away from the village and climbed to the high cliff that overlooked the rocks. Fearing her sacrifice would be in vain, she pleaded for a sign from the Great Spirit, which was quickly granted when the moon rose into the night sky. The young maiden then jumped and sacrificed her life for her people.

When the village awoke the next day, they were stunned to find that the sickness had passed and those that had been ill were suddenly healthy again. They immediately suspected that a sacrifice had been made and discovered the young maiden missing. The people then traveled to the rocks below the high cliff where they found the young maiden's body. The grief stricken father quickly prayed to the Great Spirit for a sign that his daughter had been welcomed into the land of the spirits and just then, water began flowing off the high cliff in a spectacular waterfall. Today, the water continues to fall in honor of the young maiden's sacrifice.
(Click the link above to read about hauntings, Big Foot sightings, and Twilight at the Falls, too! Oh my!)

We made it to my Florida expatriat friend, Joe's apartment in Portland at about 6:15pm. We unloaded our stuff, then headed out to Vita Cafe, picking up my friends Marcy and Jon (Missouri expatriats) on the way. Hooray for reunions!

It was oh-so-hard to choose what to eat for dinner. Everything looked so good! Luckily, Marcy and Jon both ordered vegan meals, so I was able to sample from their plates. Because it was a dreary, rainy day, I went ahead and ordered the "Savory Seitan Stew," which was delicious! If you like Tofurky, you'll love this stew. It was the perfect amount of savory, definitely hearty with chunks of carrot and celery, and the blob of mashed potatoes were awesome for soaking up every last bit of the broth.

Oh my gosh, my mouth is watering just looking at this.

Marcy ordered the "Flamin' Tempeh," which is not spicy, like the name would suggest. I'm still on the fence about tempeh, but the sauce on this dish was awesome! Sweet, savory, and a little smoky.


Her hubby, Jon ordered the "Chicken Fried Steak," which contained neither chicken nor steak. If I hadn't ordered the stew, I would have gotten this, so I was happy to nab a bite from Jon's plate.

This was AWESOME! A perfectly breaded and fried tofu "steak," totally smothered in almond gravy. The tofu had a fantastic crispness to it, and the gravy was amazing!

Vita Cafe is not 100% vegan. They do offer free-range, grass fed beef and local seafood. This is a good place to go for a meal if you're in "mixed company."

We all split desserts, which sadly weren't as great as our meals. The cake slices were all pretty dry, but the icings were good.

chocolate mocha (couldn't actually detect any mocha flavor, though)


chocolate-mint (outrageously rich)

After dinner, we did lots of walking and ended up at the Avalon theater, which is an old movie theater-turned-arcade, where we romped around, played skee-ball and air hockey, and basically pissed away several dollars a piece. But it was fun!





Marcy wasn't so good at driving a semi-truck. Better stick to teaching, Marcy!

Our evening concluded around midnight Pacific time, which would be 2am back home. I don't feel like the time change has affected me much, maybe because we've been making such a gradual progression through the time zones, from Central to Mountain to Pacific. I'm having a harder time remembering what day it is!

PNW Trip: Day 3 - Mostly Idaho

I woke up at 7:15AM to get ready for another day of driving. I put some puzzles together with little Molly before she left for her first day of preschool! (She was not very excited.) My breakfast was a strawberry, two slivers of an awesome peach, and a banana with some really good peanut butter - the best peanut butter out of a jar that I've ever had!




I'd never seen that brand of natural PB before (must be a Utah thing). As we were packing up the car to leave, I noticed that our hosts sneaked the jar into our cooler. How lovely!

We were on the road by 9:15am (tried to time our departure so we wouldn't hit crazy rush hour traffic) and went to Antelope Island near SLC. Unfortunately, it costs $9 to enter and we only planned on being there for less than 30 minutes, long enough to look around and take pictures, so we didn't actually go in. Here's a picture of a buffalo near the entrance instead.



From there, we were on the road to scenic Idaho!


(pictures from a scenic overlook)

We stopped for lunch in Twin Falls. By the time we arrived at Prasai's, we were STARVING.


We ordered an "appetizer" of tofu satay, but I think she actually brought us an entrée - it was HUGE!

(that little plate X 4) It was SO GOOD, though. We weren't really complaining about the overabundance of crispy, fried tofu smothered in peanut sauce. It also had rice noodles, mung bean sprouts, and diced cucumber. YUM.

Since we ordered off the lunch menu, a side salad was included. The dressing options were ranch or peanut; I obviously chose peanut. It was exactly the same sauce as what was on the tofu satay.

(side salad sans egg)

For my actual meal, I just asked for a tofu and veggie stir-fry dish, since they didn't quite have that on the lunch menu. This is what came.

Honestly, not the best stir-fry I've ever had. The whole dish was sort of bland, really lacking spices and flavor, and the noodles were gross. (I didn't realize noodles came with the dish.) There was a lot of leftover peanut sauce from the satay, so I drizzled that onto the stir-fry and that helped. I was very happy to eat some vegetables (gotta have muh veggies), but I was even more grateful that we had the tofu satay and the salad beforehand. Regardless, we left Prasai's absolutely STUFFED.

Back on the road for a long, long journey to the Sawtooth Mountains. I saw a tumbleweed(!!) bounce across the highway on the way there. I dozed off for awhile, but woke up in time for the scenic drive through Sawtooth, which was lovely and COLD! So, so cold.






The scenic drive through Sawtooth was long enough to make us worry when the gas light came on. Just when we thought we were getting out of the mountains, the road started to go up, up, up again. We started to have some faint worries that we'd be stranded (which would suck, because we very rarely saw anyone else on the road), but luckily, we made it out of there and to an overpriced gas station in the nick of time.

From there, we headed straight to Boise, where I was excited to visit the Boise Fry Company for dinner! When researching restaurants in the Boise area, this place sounded like a perfect stop: vegan-friendly, and all about POTATOES. Does it get more Idaho than that?! Their slogan is "burgers on the side," which tells you how seriously good their fries are.

When you enter Boise Fry Co., you pick which potato you want and how you want it prepared. We made it just 20 minutes before closing, which unfortunately meant that many of their potatoes were sold out for the day. Still, we ordered some Russet homestyle fries (true Idaho potatoes) and then some okinawa fries, "regular" style. The Okinawa potato is sweeter than a sweet potato, so we were interested to try them. We also ordered burgers as part of the special/combo.



All of the fries are hand-cut and unsalted. BFC has a salt bar and a ketchup bar, where you can choose what flavors of each you want to go with your fries. Garlic salt, jalapeno salt... so many varieties. When our Okinawa fries came out, the counter guy urged us to sprinkle them with vanilla salt and dip them in blueberry ketchup.


WOW. How else can I describe these amazing fries? This picture does not do it justice. It does not convey the absolute DELICIOUSNESS of these fries. Yes, they are sweeter than a sweet potato, but in a good way. Nay, a GREAT way. The vanilla salt adds to perfect amount of saltiness with a touch of sweet. And that blueberry ketchup?! Damn! It's better than you could probably imagine. You can definitely taste the sweet blueberry-ness, but it's still a little tangy like ketchup. I could have eaten a BUCKET of these fries.

(spicy ketchup, blueberry ketchup, and standard ketchup)

I don't have as awesome things to say about my black bean-quinoa burger, though. I can't really hold it against BFC, though, because their motto is "burgers on the side," after all. And really, who could compete with those badass Okinawa fries?


My main complaints with this burger is 1. it's very bland. It's ALL quinoa with some black beans. It could use more spices and more textures; and 2. the texture. It was undercooked and squishy. It felt like I was just eating a blob of quinoa with some black beans mashed in. I also feel like the burger as a whole would have improved with some avocado and sprouts or something. To be fair, though, their "red onion gastrique" was awesome. I HATE red onions with a fiery, burning passion, but this sauce was delicious and didn't catch my lips on fire.

The counter guy was really friendly and helpful and chatted with us a bit. The restaurant is small (smaller than I imagined), but nicely decorated with local art. The restaurant is also very green: lots of recycling, lots of reusing and reducing, very little throw-away items, etc. Even though I was disappointed in the burger, Boise Fry Co. will DEFINITELY bring me back to Boise. I would seriously make the drive just for the fries. If you EVER find yourself in Boise, near Boise, or just passing through, you'd be doing yourself a grave disservice if you didn't stop in and eat the most amazing fries of your life.

When we left BFC, we drove around the city briefly, trying to find downtown or some nightlife, but it was a weeknight and not much was going on. We checked in at our hotel, I jumped on the bed, and then fell asleep with visions of vanilla-salted Okinawa fries, dancing in my head.