Pacific North Wonderland Day Two: Portland, again!

Coming back tomorrow to finish that post turned into two weeks, oops! Things have been so weird and great and terrible lately. But that is another story for another time. I need to tell you more about our Pacific North West trip! Because it was amazing, and I'm so glad we didn't cancel it after the insane October we had. 

So, back to where we were. This is the second part of our first full day in Portland. You can see part one here. We join our heroes at lunch, at Vtopia, the vegan CHEESE SHOP.

I was very excited about visiting this place. Fancy vegan cheese is usually amazing! We ended up not getting a cheese plate, which I kind of regret. I would have especially liked to try that macadamia and cashew Camembert.

The best thing we had was the fancy mac and cheese. Oh man! It was so creamy, and whatever they used for the "bacon" was just perfect. If we lived nearby I would be getting a big bowl of that to go whenever I could. Mmmmmmm.
To the left you can see my little trip journal. I usually forget, but it is so fun to make one with Travis. We write down everything we see, funny convos we overhear, food we eat. When I read back over it there are so many things I've already forgotten about!

We also got panini sandwiches that were just ok. I really wanted to try the soft pretzels, but another couple in the shop got the last order! Maybe next time. My favorite thing on that plate was the salad, which is weird because it was just greens with olive oil and I think pink sea salt, but it tasted so good!

The big plan for the rest of the day was shopping! There were tons of stores I wanted to check out in town. First on the list was Fat Fancy, a vintage plus size shop! I've wanted to visit for years. I tried on gold lame hot pants and caftans and sweaters and loved it. I never find vintage in my size, here I had options! And there was a Miss Piggy shrine. Perfection!

After we had paid I noticed a "Large and in charge" Latrice Royale pin, so I had to make another purchase! She is one of my favorite queens! "Funky yet Chunky".

I bought this caftan. And a cute sweater that will make an appearance in another trip post.

This place, Ray's Ragtime, was really close to Fat Fancy so we stopped in. It was packed to the roof (literally!) with vintage clothes! And elf shoes....

Travis ended up with this cute plaid jacket. He was so excited that it was lined. See the dresses hanging on those racks? They went around the entire store! So many!

What followed was hours of walking up and down Mississippi Avenue going in cool shop after cool shop. Here are a few of the things we saw, I didn't take many photos.

Reading Frenzy (zines!!)

Travis got a hair cut. Said he wanted to look good for my photos, hah!

This tea shop and a whole page of different kinds of chai! I picked the black forest, it was ok. I would love to try more of them. And I love that sign. 

Travis told me "That looks kind of seamless!" when I put on this mask, so he took a photo to show me. I guess he was right!

After all that shopping we were starving and went to dinner at the Black Water Bar. A bar will all vegan food?? Don't mind if I do! Like several vegan places we went in Portland, there was no mention of all the food being vegan on the menu, so I double checked the Happy Cow listing. It seemed too good to be true! 

The BEST thing was the mozzarella sticks. They were so good, I don't even understand how they did it. I had a seitan barbeque sandwich that was great, and Travis was in love with his Western burger. I also had a Cock and Bull ginger ale, but it was TOO spicy. While we were eating they were playing the Hobbit on a big screen, with the sound off. We loved it so much we ended up back there again the next night.

Per Rae and Travis vacation tradition we had to see a movie while we were out of town. We picked Goosebumps, it was delightful! There were several laugh out loud moments, though we were disappointed the evil sponge from "It Came From Beneath the Sink" didn't make an appearance.

 

After the movie we headed back to our little farm abode and fell asleep. It was a good day.

Home By Way of Columbus

The time has come my friends.All good things must come to an end and we eventually had to come back home. We left Cleveland early-ish to start the trip home. It was supposed to take a little over 8 hours. We made a few pit stops of course.

Like at this field of corn in Dublin, Ohio! It is in the middle of an industrial park, so weird. Apparently it is a tribute to the inventor of hybrid corn. There are 109 ears. While we were there a girl about our age pulled up and proceeded to take corn selfies. It was a hot spot on Sunday morning.

We got to Columbus around lunch time and made our way to Dirty Frank's Hotdog Palace. What a place! What a town! We planned on just making a quick food stop but ended up staying for a few hours.

Everything about it was cute. I need that Freddie painting.

I got the picnic blanket. It was a veggie dog with slaw, baked beans, relish and crushed potato chips. Geeze! It was a little too much for me, I like stuff pretty plan usually, but it was good.

Travis loved it so much!

I  don't even remember what he got. He might be by soon to edit this post and tell you. Haha! He comes after me and fixes all my typos. A little behind the scenes for you!

We made our way to the Big Fun location in downtown Columbus so we could get another photobooth strip. Parking was awful and Travis dropped me off then took about 20 minutes to find a spot! It ended up being good though, because on the way back we found all kinds of cute shops to look in. It was such a nice day. I felt very happy and in love with life. And that Pee Wee sign.

Here is what we bought. I love the two photo strips we got this trip. And that Pee Wee fun pack was amazing! It temporary tattoos, a lenticular picture, sticks, a toy and an activity and every single thing was awesome! I wish I had bought a few more! The Addams Family cards were for Travis, obviously. He is obsessed. He keeps talking about getting a THIRD Addams Family tattoo.

We did some vintage browsing too. All I bought here was a little spun head guy. I wish I had bought this Elvis bust.

I heemed and hawed about buying this Life Magazine and now I wish I had! I haven't found it that cheap online. I need to see the Pee Wee party tips!!

More cute shops. Made the long walk to our car much more fun!

One shop had this awesome chicken machine, for a quarter you got an egg that had a button made with a vintage illustration! I got an owl and a squirrel! Made for me!

After we got back to the car we drove to 16 Bit, recommended to me by my buddy Jane Boston. It is a bar that is full of arcade games!

It was so fun! We had a bunch of quarters (I got a roll for tolls) but soon realized you didn't have to pay for most of the games! Really all you had to pay for was pinball. If we lived in town I'd love to come back. We didn't even end up getting drinks because it was early and we were about to get back on the road.

Travis loved the Simpsons game, and Time Crisis. We played Marble Madness too, it was so hard!

We got back on the road, and had about 6 hours left to go.

I got this at a coffee shop in Columbus. I love it! I need to find it somewhere around here.

We made great time until we got to Louisville and got stuck in stand still traffic! It made us too late to eat at Heart and Soy, which really is a tragedy. We finally got out of traffic, got pizza at Mellow Mushroom then high tailed it home. We got back at almost midnight and had to leave the pugs with my aunt another night. But for that, and the rain in Salem, our trip really went off without a hitch! I'm so thankful I have a partner who loves to go on trips like this with me. We had such a wonderful time, I can't wait for our next trip! We're thinking either Austin, Tx, or Portland and Seattle next fall!

Cleveland! Land of Dreams!

I didn't know what to expect from our visit to Cleveland, but it ended up being maybe our favorite stop of the trip! I actually have two more posts about it, because I couldn't fit the house from A Christmas Story and the BEST vintage store I've ever been to into one post! I can't wait to share it all with you! But first things first, we stayed on the top floor of this great house. Air Bnb again, of course. It was so cheap and it seemed bigger than our house! We stayed in the Lakewood area of Cleveland.

Big Fun is such a good store! We were able to make it to two out of three locations on our trip. I found it when I was looking for photo booths. The one here wasn't in use, bummer! But it was still amazing! That dog house is front is lockable and you can leave you dog in there while you shop! How convenient.

The whole place is full of old toys and games. Look at all those Care Bears in the window!

And My Little Ponies! The old ones (the good ones!) I had so many when I was a little girl. I didn't see a Pegasus with jewel eyes, which was my favorite one.

Oh man, now I'm seeing what looks like a Bookshelf game! That Mr. President one! I didn't notice that when we were there, we could have added it to our collection.

They had old game boards in the floor. What a great idea! I would love to use this idea in some future house in my future rec room.

There was also this card catalog full of tiny toys! Some vintage, some new, all cheap! I found some tiny vintage cake decorations and other weird little treasures. And pogs! We keep saying we're going to have a pog tournament! We needed slammers, thank goodness for big fun.

We ate lunch at Johnny Mango World cafe.

We pretty much got everything on the menu, which was kind of a weird hodge podge, but it was good. The fried plantains were my favorite! I really need to learn to cook those. So yummy.

You know we had to stop by a monument to "Dogs of All Wars." This is the final resting place of Smokey, or Yorkie Doodle Dandy (how much do I love that nickname???). There is a great Huffington Post article about her here (including a photo of her parachuting!). She was found in a foxhole and become the mascot of a unit in World War Two. Her most famous exploit was helping to run some communication lines through a tunnel, saving days of man power and probably some lives. She is also adorable. Maybe my favorite war dog? We actually first found out about her when we went to the AKC Museum in St. Louis.

What a great monument!

We made it over to Sweet Moses on the recommendation of the guy working at the awesome vintage store I mentioned. It is a restored soda fountain and it has a whole vegan menu! Yay!

Travis had a vegan banana split! It was amazing! I had a chocolate and strawberry sundae that was also good, but not very photogenic. Mmmm. I wish there was a good shop to get vegan ice cream around here.

We ended our day in Cleveland at the movies seeing Fury. It is tradition for us to see a movie on vacation, and Travis couldn't wait any longer to see the one WW2 movie he hasn't seen. That might be an exaggeration, maybe not. It was good though. And I loved Brad Pitt's haircut (I know you were wondering.)

These three silos are outside of a chocolate factory to the south of Cleveland. What a great town. We'll be back for sure.