Late in the day I rode across the river for a quick look at the exterior of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.
Nearby I saw a pair of very tortured-looking weeping trees - apparently willows, but perhaps something exotic.
I forget the exact location, but while on the east side of the river I found this trackside scene, and I always like to have as many receding (perspectival) diagonal lines end at corners as possible.
This was in homage to my industrial photography guru, Charles Sheeler, who often employed strong diagonals - if not exactly ending in corners, which is likely not ideal, but I still like it. I consider this one of his most powerful works.
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1987.1100.1/
Next up on the west side was Portland Old Town, where the weekend arts and crafts vendors were just closing up shop for the day. One guide wrote about this district, "Several of the 19th-century stone, brick and cast-iron-fronted buildings are lively pubs, but not as many as in the 1870s, when Portland had one saloon for every 40 inhabitants."
Related to that historical perspective, I enjoyed the billboard painted on the wall of a century-old watering hole called the Lotus Cafe - I'm not quite sure what to call this graphic style. Although a popular nightspot until the end, I've just read that it was closed in 2016 and demolished a year ago. The Hotel Albion above it was closed in 1976 as a result of fire safety violations. I think I can read '99' in the bottom right corner of the sign.
I had decided before the trip that I was going to rent a car one day to see my first and possibly only rain forest. As always I had done a fair amount of research and planning, having a complete route for the day, maps, and a rough timetable to make it work.
I also wanted to visit the fabled Oregon coast and can't recall the actual name of the rain forest or the beach, but they were fairly close together and roughly due west from town, so someone from the area might recognize the locations. I just tried scrolling down the coast zoomed in with satellite mode, but didn't spot anything likely. I recall the beach was right next to a coastal road and far away from any developed areas.
==>> I do highly recommend a similar one-day excursion to anyone visiting Portland.
Later I drove down the coast a ways to reach a better road for my return to the city. On the way I saw a young fellow on what looked like his first "loaded touring" bicycle trip. With all that weight on the front wheel and none on the back, that thing must have been a real bear to steer. I call this one "two overloads".
This last image was taken several hours after leaving Seattle on my return trip, so has no real business being in a Portland thread, but OTOH it's the only image here that features Amtrak, so I'm hoping you'll let it slide. It's a favorite image, but came at a price - I felt my newly-purchased orange conference cap fly off in the airstream as I took the shot.
There was an interesting incident some two weeks after I returned from the trip, in the form of a letter from Budget requesting additional funds. Apparently I had parked their car in a hotel space vs. one of their own - due to all of theirs being filled as I recall, and the Portland State University police had issued a ticket. My first reaction was how petty of the school, as Budget obviously leased the space from them so I was amazed they didn't have a better understanding. However, looking at my final receipt from Budget, they had time-stamped the car as returned something like two minutes before the ticket was issued, so I told them the problem was theirs and not mine - and didn't hear from them again.
