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Beautiful Mount Hood And Other Oregon Gems

6/27/2021

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​BEAUTIFUL MOUNT HOOD AND OTHER OREGON GEMS

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...Continued from yesterday:
     
My sister Romaine and I spent the next five days seeking out what  gems might be uncovered in this patch of Oregon. We discovered a number, but rising above all the natural and man-made delights was Mount Hood, which was in our view much of the time wherever we drove,
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​...at times seeming to magically float above the landscape.
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     On Thursday morning we spent some time in quaint downtown Sherwood,
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...and tried a restaurant called Clancy's, where the ambiance was pleasant,
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...and the food and service were very good.     
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    After breakfast we drove to the nearby town of Tualatin to a vast plant nursery called The Garden Corner which was located in a forest.
     The Garden Corner was a wonderland in bloom where the plants were displayed by color and type.
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    The Garden Corner claimed to have the world's largest hanging basket,
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...which maybe it did, though we did find other things of interest, among them black petunias,
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...this plant that resembled a giant jester's hat,
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...and a Sasquatch yard statue.
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     That evening we went to a local park,     
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...where Romaine brought me as a guest to a workout group she had joined.
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    The following morning we drove several miles through the countryside, 
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​...to the town of Tigard,
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...where we tried the breakfast at the Biscuits Cafe.
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     There I ordered the most fabulous cinnamon roll, slathered in warm cream cheese frosting that was like pudding and the size of a dinner plate. Here's my left-overs after I ate - make that inhaled - half of it. 
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      The following morning the sun came out and so we went for a stroll in downtown Sherwood (see previous post, "A Little Slice of Heaven in Sherwood, Oregon"), which was crowded with fellow strollers and Saturday morning brunchers.
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     Romaine had discovered a downtown park, so we walked through the park as well.
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     That evening we returned to downtown Sherwood with Romaine's friend Michael to try dinner at a bar called Uncorked,
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    In truth the food looked better than it tasted - a distinct lack of seasoning - and the service was not great. 
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​However the ambience was quite lovely and enjoyable,
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...and so we decided that mayhaps this restaurant hadn't quite gotten its land legs back after the COVID shut-down and so mayhaps deserved another go-round at some future date.
      On Sunday morning we drove to the neighboring town of Newberg,
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...for brunch at the Black Bear Diner,
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...a cozy place with a rustic decor,
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...and great food.
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      We then returned to The Garden Corner,
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...where Romaine picked out a few more plants for her garden. ​
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       The next day, Memorial Day, was the last day of my visit, and so it was my wish to return to Biscuits Cafe, where I had consumed that most memorable cinnamon roll.
       However, this time I had a hankering  to try the hot biscuits with strawberry jam that had caught my eye on our previous visit, so I ordered the eggs and hash browns with which the biscuits and jam came as a side.
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     Were the biscuits and jam as yummy as I had fantasized they might be? Indeed they were. The eggs and hash brown were also very good.
       Romaine likewise declared her veggie scramble delicious.  
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      After breakfast we drove about forty minutes to Salem to the Adelman Peony Gardens, where there were thousands of peonies of many varieties,
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...as well as a few other kinds of late spring flowers in bloom.
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     That afternoon Romaine and I decided to go to the movies. This would be the first time that either of us had been inside a movie theater since the beginning of the pandemic last year. We decided that for our for first foray back a 2:45 pm matinee on Memorial Day should be a fairly safe venture.
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        This turned out to be the case, as the movie theater was practically empty.
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     On the walls and floors were posted the same cautionary admonitions that one has become used to seeing in public places since the pandemic.
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    Social distancing turned out to be easy enough since there were only two other people besides ourselves in our auditorium. We saw "A Quiet Place II." 
     Now, much as I liked "A Quiet Place" (see post 4/23/2018, "A Quiet Place," A Troubling Metaphor"), I thought the sequel was a drag, kind of  ho-hum but at the same time nerve-wracking due to all the "gotcha" moments.  My sister, on the other hand, really liked the flick. In fact, I think everybody else really liked this flick. It'll probably win an academy award.
      That night we watched on TV a Netflix movie called "Army of the Dead" in which Las Vegas is taken over by zombies,  
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...and which I thought was considerably better than "A Quiet Place II."  
      Early the following morning I caught one final, glorious  glimpse of Mount Hood,
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...then I was back at the Portland airport,
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...and soon headed home.
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