Oregon Tour 2014 Day 8: Champoeg State Park to Portland

Lunch at Thai Peacock, downtown Portland.

Made it back to Portland. Miles ridden: 462 miles. Miles per hour: 10.1. Days: 8 (7 sunny; 1 torrentially rainy and windy.). New beers tried: 21 (all Oregonian & Washingtonian). Passes crossed: 14. Passes made: 0 (note to P&B). Close-calls with assholes in SUVs: 500. Close calls with assholes in RVs: 200. Close calls with assholes in pickups hauling ATVs: 100. Fingers flipped at aforementioned assholes: several. Heart beats missed: 7,000. Whales watched: 2. Flat tires: 0. Expectations met or exceeded: 6 (Scenery, weather, beer, food, coffee, bike infra-structure, beer). Expectations quashed: 5 (ODOT's coastal bike signage, traffic, speed of traffic, coast 101 bike route, Amtrak). Injuries sustained: 0. Injuries caused: 0?.

The ride into Portland proper was a bit hairy. For all its great bicycle infrastructure, the outlying areas are still typically suburban and car-centric. From up here, it'll be all down hill, literally, as we wend our way downtown and to the Willamette River, and our hotel.

Google maps wasn't much help as they wanted to route us up busy Hwy. 99. So, we made use of this West Coast ride app for the rather circuitous ride into town.

Tonight we traded in our campsites for the Hotel Benson, conveniently located close to the Portland Union Station.

Our next stop after lunch was of course beer. First up, Pints

We both had the Rip Saw Red. Very tasty. 

Note: this brewery is now called Ascendant Beer Company.

A block from our hotel is the marvelous Bailey's Tap Room. They set the standard for what I expect from a tap room.

Yes, that's right: $4.50 for a proper pint (20 ounces--thanks, Sam Adams. You defeated the British and we get stuck with 16 ounce pints!?). Take note Full Court Press @ the otherwise superior El Bate Shop in Des Moines.

Final beer stop of the day, the pretty weird Tugboat Brewing Company, also within two blocks of our hotel.

A small sampling of the odd assortment of kitsch at this strange place. I might have enjoyed it had the beer been better.

Perhaps we chose unwisely, but we really didn't care for our beers at the inveterate Tugboat. This is the oldest craft brew pub in Portland, and from what I've seen, it's been eclipsed by the newcomers, like many older craft beer places.

Addendum: This place closed in 2017. According Tugboat's owner-operators Terry Nelson and Megan McEnroe-Nelson, it's not for lack of customers. Rather, it's the "atrocious, decayed, fleabag" apartments upstairs. Tugboat was forced to close for repairs in March of that year, when a fire ripped through the upstairs Stewart Apartments, collapsing the bar's ceiling. They never reopened.