The Dog Forest

     ...Continued from yesterday:

     And behold, on the fourth day, my last day in Portland, there was sun, and an itsy-bitsy spider miraculously hanging out above Romaine's front porch.

   Granted, it was not warm, bright L.A.-style sunshine we woke up to on Sunday morning, but that mild, cool Portland sunshine. However that was enough to encourage us to get out bright and (sort of) early and walk about a mile through the surrounding neighborhood,

...to a restaurant called City State Diner and Bakery,

​..which was already packed with the Sunday morning breakfast crowd,

...but we eventually got a nice table outside.

     Breakfast was outstanding.  Romaine ordered a spinach and mushroom scramble with a side of polenta and the biggest, fluffiest freshest biscuit, which she generously shared with me,

..seeing how my tongue was hanging out for that biscuit,.
     Meanwhile I had the Croque Madame, an egg on top of grilled ham and cheese , hot crispy French fries and a most delicious dill pickle, which really set off the rest of the meal, and which I likewise shared with Romaine.

​     And I really appreciated my saucer-sized cup of tea.  Tea-drinkers will know what I mean, as  in restaurants we often feel like the poor relations next to the coffee drinkers.

     After breakfast we walked back home,

     By then the sky was looking overcast again, which put us back into "Breaking Bad" mode for a few hours.

​     But then the sun came back out so we decided to take Lucy on her belated walk around Mt. Tabor,

​...a beautiful city park set upon a dormant volcano.

     The plan was to walk round the hillside for a bit then let Lucy run free in the dog park.
     Now, I guess I had imagined that the dog park would  be a fenced-off square of  play ground-type area, where the dogs played in the center while the parents sat on benches along the edge and chatted while their poochies played.
     Not at all so.
     The Mt. Tabor dog park was a sequestered forest area with a suggestion of a path,

​...where the dogs were free to run, play,

...and hang out to their hearts' content.

     As for me with my phobia of big aggressive dogs, this was a little like wandering through one of my recurring nightmares, the Big Dogs After Me one. Of course the dogs weren't after me, as I tried telling my phobia, they just wanted to run around and play, but I'm sorry to say my phobia won out and Lucy's fun was cut a bit short on my account. 
    Sorry, Lucy. 8/
    It was an overall nice hike, though, and by dinner time we felt we'd earned the right to take on nourishment, seeing as we'd finally spent the greater part of a day doing something more healthy than watching 'Breaking Bad"
    For dinner we tried a Chinese restaurant where the food, though nicely presented, tasted kind of bland.

     Our fortunes were pretty good, though.

       Romaine's:

​...and mine.