The Gieser Grand Hotel

Barbara Sidway is one of the very nice people I have met over the years in the Oregon tourism industry. Several years ago she and her husband saved the Gieser Grand Hotel from the wrecking ball. Originally built in the 1890's it had fallen into grave disrepair and the owner was trying to find a savior. Baker City had condemned the building, but neither the owner nor the city had the money to tear it down, so it sat as an eyesore for many years in downtown. Luckily Barbara had the vision to restore it to it's original glory and it is now one of my favorite hotels in Oregon. Not only are the rooms cozy and welcoming, with modern amenities, the food it great and they have one of the best bars in the area. the staff is also super helpful and will gladly steer you to all the great things you can see and do in the area.

Oregon Trail Interpretive Center

I was out in Eastern Oregon for a work meeting, and is often the case with these trips, we also got to see a part of Oregon I usually would not have seen.

About 10 miles outside Baker City is the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. It is run by the Bureau of Land Management and they have some great displays that bring to life what life was like for a person making the trek out to Oregon in the 1800's. In a nutshell it was a hard trip. The vast migration took off in 1843 and lasted for over 25 years. The tip was over 2000 miles, with most people making 16-20 miles a day. Then when you got to the end, there was a sign pointing north to Oregon and south to GOLD. It's an interesting kind of person that choose north.

National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center
22267 Oregon Highway 86
Baker City, OR 97814-0987
541-523-1843

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson

I finally got to the last book in Stieg Larsson's trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, which is the finale to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. This is the one book that you have to have read the others to get the most out of it. It picks up right where The Girl Who Played with Fire left off with Lisbeth Salander in the hospital recovering from her gunshot wounds and all the bad guys still alive and kicking. Although she spends the majority of the book confined to a hospital bed, this book has more adventure and intrigue than any of the previous books. It is obvious Larsson is going for a big ending here as he ties up a lot of the loose ends.

I have chronicled Larsson's death and the fallout in a previous review, so I won't go into all that again. Suffice to say it is a shame that another book will not be forthcoming as there is still a lot more that could have been mined out of these characters.

Park Kitchen

Saturday night we made our first trip to Park Kitchen in Portland's Pearl District. It must be getting a lot of good accolades in the press as both tables next to us were tourists who had heard it was one of the best restaurants in town. I am not sure I would put it in my top five, but the food was excellent.

We got a great table outside looking at the park blocks, which is always nice on a summer evening. The service was great, and our waitress made several good suggestions. We decided to stick with the small plates and a desert. We were very happy with our choices: pork belly with mashed potatoes, the salt cod fritters with malt vinegar, flank steak with blue cheese, parsley and sherried onion and an amazing salad. Four plates were enough for us, but we would have added the fried green beans and bacon, tarragon aioli if we had had the space. The large plates looked very good, but they were indeed large (and expensive) and probably better suited to cooler weather and heartier appetites.

Park Kitchen
422 NW 8th Ave
Portland, OR 97209
(503) 223-7275

What is that smell?

For a week I have been driving around with a terrible smell in my car. It got really bad as the temperature got up into the 90's, so sitting in stop and go traffic on the way back from Beaverton last week was no fun. As the smell continued to intensify, I decided to take the car apart until I found the source. My fear was that one of the mice that has been seen in the garage took the bait we put out and burrowed into my car and died. After pulling out and cleaning all the carpets, it became more and more obvious this was what happened. I dug around in every crevice the car has until I got to a tiny space in the very back of the trunk where I couldn't see anything, but the smell was very strong. Thankfully my shop vac did the ugly job of removing a small dead mouse from it's automotive grave. I then hit the space with a bottle of bleach and tried to air it out over the weekend.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I was thinking of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald today because we saw the massive house in Newport, RI where they shot the Gatsby movie on our trip last weekend (despite the book being set on Long Island). It's also a great book to read in depressed times to remind ourselves that we never seem to learn the lesson of boom times - that they don't last for ever. This seems to be a trend as the book only sold 25,000 copies when it was first printed in 1925. It didn't become popular until after the Second World War when prosperity returned to the US.

Purple Guy

I see this guy on the bus all the time. Today, he was especially color coordinated in purple, maybe like Prince in his late 50's.