My wife and I had the chance to visit Oregon and Washington with the CM Russell Museum Staff. They invited me to participate by doing two painting demonstrations at country clubs in Portland and Seattle. It was a quick 5 day trip for the two of us and we definitely enjoyed our first trip in several years with out kids.
It was our first time in Portland and we really enjoyed it. It's a great, clean city with lots of great restaurants, shops and cool buildings. I really enjoy looking at architecture and painting cityscapes so I took a lot of photos.
When I wasn't painting, we were able to tour the city and the surrounding areas. We visited the Columbia River Gorge (which is stunning) and the Oregon Coast all in one day. We didn't have much time to spend but we loved everything we saw. The cool old fisherman's village of Garibaldi and the jungle walk and idealic beach of Oswald West were some of our favorite parts of the coastline. We already know we missed a lot of amazing parts of the coast and we hope to get back there soon, and next time we'll bring the kids.
When we got to Seattle, things got a little bit interesting. We saw a guy shooting up (heroine? meth?) between his toes right on the street downtown. There seemed to be a lot of crime and homeless people. It's too bad because it really is a nice city. While we were there, we wanted to eat at a seafood restaurant but we ended up at an asian restaurant that served interesting food....all I wanted was some fish and chips! (see pic below) One of our favorite parts of Seattle and the surrounding area were the Ballard Locks. It was cool to see how they move boats and barges through to get them to the top of the dam.
Garibaldi & Oswald West
My wife imitating a rock that's imitating an ape. Powell Books
Seattle Gum Wall & some fishy looking seafood.
The painting demos were fun and I was able to meet a lot of great new people.
Thank you, Russell Museum for the invitation!