Portland Oregon

Journey to the Land of Water Wind and Fire

Part A: Getting There IIIb

Portland Oregon

At last, after a rail journey spanning 5 days and 3,246 miles (with one layover), we arrived at our first, but by no means final, destination, Portland Oregon. This would be the first of two partial days that we would spend in the city, while waiting for a connecting train. Again, notice an advantage to traveling by Amtrak, when you have a "layover" of 3-4 hours, you are not stuck in some concrete structure miles out in the countryside from anything. Rather, most of the time, Richmond VA being one of the major exceptions to this rule, you are right there, in the heart of downtown, or in some cases, what used to be downtown. And so, we took advantage of the layover, to do a little sightseeing.


Our train had been 25 minutes EARLY. This is not all that uncommon for the Empire Builder. I know for those of us accustomed to the "CSX" way of handling passenger rail traffic, it seems a little unusual. But this is a train that is used to being not only on time, but often a bit early, at least westbound. I had originally planned on leaving on the Coast Starlight, and thus we now had over 4 hours. I inquired about catching an earlier bus that Amtrak runs between Portland and Eugene, but was told that it was full. (Gee we heard that phrase used a lot on Amtrak on this trip, is anyone in Washington listening?)


And so we walked down to the Willamette River near the station to take in a few sights. We had originally thought we might take in the Classical Chinese Garden, but opted to do that when we came back, weather permitting.


Instead of doing Chinese, we did Japanese. We visited the Portland Oregon Japanese-American Historical Plaza. The garden-like display was mainly about the Internment Camps that Japanese-Americans were forced into during World War II. In addition to some statues about that period of our history, there were also some displays of Japanese Haikus. Most of the verse expressed the feelings from that era. There is a special Nekkei Legacy museum in town, but we did not have the time to go there.


We also took the time to look at a few of the buildings in the area. While the architecture was nothing like what we had seen in Chicago, still it was interesting. We were, after all, just across the river from the Portland Convention Center. Further, the blocks we had walked through to reach the river were filled with buildings from a much earlier time in Portland's history.


After spending a brief time down along the River, we walked back up into the heart of what Portland refers to as "The Pearl District." Here we strolled along the North Park Blocks. When Portland was originally designed, the idea was that they would preserve a broad green promenade that would extend from the Willamette River all the way through town. Alas, this noble vision was lost somewhere along the way and instead, the town is left with two "vestiges" of this noble ideal, the North Park Blocks and the South Park Blocks. The North Park Blocks, where we were, went through a mostly commercial area. There was one exception to this, however, this was the Old Customs Building, built strong and stout, as most of those building were. Most people forget that prior to the imposition of an income tax, the fees charged for imports, tarriffs is the proper term, was the single largest generator of income for the Federal Government. Accordingly, the Customs Houses in most trading centers were prominent structures befitting their importance to the finances of our country.


We also paused at an unusual structure at the far end of the North Park Blocks, the Da Tung Elephant Sculpture. Da Tung, this is an English rendering of a Chinese phrase means either "Universal Peace" or "Large Bronze" (or perhaps both). It is a gift from a Chinese businessman who had visited Portand many times and was very impressed by the city. It is a replica of a wine vase from the late Shang dynasty (1200-1100 BC).


But soon, we had to leave and return, for we had still not arrived. We had one more rail journey of 123 miles to make before we arrived at our true "destination," Eugene Oregon. But more on that in the next posting.