Tree Huggers

Embracing another Portland cliche the boys have become "tree-
huggers" while here. And I mean that in the most literal sense of the word. How else can you measure how wide a tree trunk is?
Portlandians keep asking us what we are doing here for the month of July and our pat answer is "escaping the heat". Truth is we really just love a lot of things about Portland, but the rain ain't one of them. The dry(ier) months of July and August are splendid with 70-80 degree days and berries and flowers galore. It is like cheating summer and extending our spring. Outside during the middle of the day is madness at home, here it is pleasant. Using all 16 hours of sunlight-delightful.

Parks and Portland go together like Mulder and Scully. (Shout out to Bill, our resident X-files geek!) Stop and smell the roses has been the pace for our trip and Romney stopped long enough to get caught. Sucker! Washington Park, home of the famous Portland rose gardens, the zoo, the children's museum, as well as numerous other Portland tourist must sees, was our first park destination. The fourth of July may not have been the least crowded time to choose to visit, but whatever.

Our walk today took us through local Gabriel Park. Gabriel park houses woods that are so thick and spectacular, Romney had to check our faces as we exited our walk through them to make sure we hadn't turned into monsters. Perplexed and forgetting who I was talking to, I didn't understand what he was doing, at first, and asked for details. "Those woods are exactly what you would expect in a movie when the trees come to life and a secret forest monster turns everyone who comes into the forest into monsters." Silly, me. I pictured Bambi. "Portland greenery, nature and secret forest monsters enjoyable all day."-- Clearly a lyric missing from this SONG for Portland.