The last entry

I hope those who are travelling with us missed yesterday's entry. We left Yreka and drove on to Portland with only a couple of stops. We had a great experience in Canyonville, finding a secondhand/antique store where I found the rice cooker I had been looking for and of course, Norm found a few more postcards. One request I made for the trip was to hit at least one outlet mall. Well we found one in Woodburn, Oregon. I now know why I am not a mall shopper, too many stores with things I don't really need. However . . . I did find a store selling only Le Creuset products! I now have a new cast-iron fry pan, crepes soon to follow! We were lucky finding accommodation in Portland but the Downtown "Value" Inn lacked high speed access and after 45 minutes of limited use, I gave up.
This morning we went to probably the best outdoor market I have ever seen. We bought fresh Ambrosia apples, hot organic oatmeal porridge with raisins, bagel with raspberry jam, a Mississippi hoho, Stumptown coffee, organic carrots and all before breakfast. Outstanding tastes and check out the displays, so colourful. The garbage cans are all covered over with a sign saying that today you can not use the garbage cans but instead you must recycle all waste products in bins properly labelled near by. Cool eh!   And of course we did a quick visit to Powell Books. And now we are in Port Angeles heading home. Norm drove the last part of the trip and it poured the whole way. I guess the holiday is over.
What's a hoho, I can hear you ask? An eclair-sized little buttermilk chocolate cake with seven-minute icing on top. Breakfast of champions, yum. It's from a bakery and it's called a Mississippi hoho because the bakery is on Mississippi Street. OK, we had porridge too, from the Blue Gardenia cafe's booth in the market, made from organically-grown oats from Montana. Oh yes, and a cinnamon crown, we'd call it a small cinnamon bun. Portland is our new favourite Pacific northwest city. On the way to PA, we passed the wonderfully-named Hamma Hamma, Duckabush and Dosewallips. Exotic-sounding place names from the local Twana Indians, all rivers that rise in the very wet Olympic Mountains -- the first refers to local reeds, hab'hab, and the second is a reference to red face, describing cliffs in the area. The third is a man who was turned into a mountain near the mouth of the river with the same name.
And that's the last bit of local colour left on our 12-day trip to the south and back. See you soon. -- Norm