PDX Exploring

My friend Jenny loves the little farmers market near where I live (and where she lived until recently) but she'd never been to the big Portland State University Farmers Market. So, we planned a day to hang out and I told her it was a surprise about where we were going. It was a cloudy and cool morning. We ventured downtown and walked to the market and Jenny was very excited to be there. I love introducing someone to something new and seeing their excitement. We did a quick walk around so she could gage what there was and then we made a game plan....coffee/hot chocolate, food and then goodies to take home. We ate good food, sat and watched interesting Portlanders, chatted and then decided after the market we'd make our way to the Portland Waterfront as Portland is still in the midst of Rose Festival and the dragonboat races were happening as well as Fleet Week with all the ships. Once I told Jenny that people can tour them she decided she'd like to go...so we found ourselves among the throngs of people as the sun had come out and Portland was shining in all her glory. The lines were an eternity long to get on the ships and we had time contraints so we moved on after taking these pictures...

On our walk back to the car we stopped for lemonaide at the Saturday Market and while waiting in line a Coast guard Helicopter lowered someone into the river to do a demo of one of their helicopter rescues. It was so fun to watch. Pretty impressive!

At the end of the "rescue" I said 'and now the helicopter pilot will dip it to bow.' I was completely joking, but sure enough, once the rescued guy was in the helicopter and the crowd was cheering, the pilot did indeed turn the helicopter and dipped the nose to bow. How fun?! What a fun day! Thanks for the adventures, Jenny!