While we were in Oregon, the girls mostly just wanted to stay at Grandma’s house and play. My mom had out all of my childhood toys and my kids absolutely could not get enough of them. We are talking about an entire collection of vintage Fisher Price Little People, my American Girl doll Samantha (which you can no longer purchase) and all of her accessories, and all of my old stuffed animals, including a killer whale that had this inscription written in my own 7-year-old handwriting on the tag:
“This is Baby Kandu born June 22, 1987, at Sea World.” What are the chances that my own 7-year-old Ella had actually asked for a killer whale stuffed animal at the beginning of the summer? Of course, we had to bring Baby Kandu home with us at the end of our trip.
We did manage to drag the girls away from Grandma’s House of Fun for a few outings, however.
Claire has has been dying to see an elephant in person (she was very disappointed that there were none at the Central Park Zoo when we visited last month), so I knew one of our first stops once we got to Portland would be to take her to visit the elephants at the Oregon Zoo. I know there are elephants closer to home, but I grew up visiting Packy and friends so I couldn’t pass up a chance to bring Claire here. After the elephants, the giraffes were her second favorite animal there.
Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, OR
One of the most iconic places from my childhood is Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast. On the countless trips I took there with my family, our first stop was always the Cannon Beach Bakery. Without fail, my sister and I got doughnuts (chocolate iced for me), my dad got a cheese stick (or two), and we would get a bag of seagull food for the beach. The bakery is now in a different location and doesn’t look anything like it did when I was a kid, but I still can’t make a trip to Cannon Beach without stopping there first. They no longer sell seagull food, and I got a cheese stick (or two) this time instead of a doughnut, but it still felt like old times.
Meanwhile, my kids all got chocolate chip cookies roughly the size of their heads. After the bakery, it was time to head down to the beach.
Sweatshirt weather in August… only in Oregon.
Clockwise from left: (1) Matt and Ella walking on the beach, (2) a heart drawn in the sand by Claire, and (3) my seashell and rock collector.
Beach twirling.
One morning, we got up and headed straight to downtown Portland for breakfast.
We had to be tourists and make a stop at Voodoo Doughnut, since I’ve heard so much about it.
The line was about an hour long. We were told that the only way to avoid a line was to come at 4am. There was a crew from the Travel Channel filming a show while we were there (not sure exactly which one, but it is supposed to air sometime in December). They interviewed the man standing right in front of us, so maybe we will make a cameo as well?
After our long wait (thankfully my kids had been trained to stand in lines at Disneyland earlier in the week), we finally got our doughnuts.
Matt and I each chose the bacon maple bar, Ella and Lucy got the “Marshall Matters” M&M doughnut, my mom opted for a classic French crueller, and Claire decided on the very pinkalicious Dubble Bubble doughnut…
… of which she enjoyed every. single. bite. And afterwards she even shared the piece of bubble gum in the middle with her sisters.
Matt and I haven’t been to Portland in over three years, and the whole time he kept commenting on how all those episodes of Portlandia we’ve watched now make so much more sense to him. There’s definitely no place quite like it, but I think that’s a good thing. And all I know is, it will always feel like home to me.
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