Back in July, I took a weekend trip to Portland, Oregon to visit my friend Alana.
Alana Simmons
Alana is an OHS grad and a member of my sister’s close group of friends, the “super sexy seven.” She moved to Portland several years ago to live near her sister.
Alana’s currently finishing up her bachelor’s degree, and hopes to go to grad school to study bats. Namely, she wants to help fight White Nose Syndrome, which has devastated bats throughout the US but has yet to be a significant danger to bats in the pacific northwest.
I was just in Portland for a few days, but I got to see a lot of the area. She’s moved, but when I was there Alana’s apartment was right on the Wilimette River, so we took a walk the first night. I explored some of Portland on Friday, crossed over to Washington and hiked the lower Ape Cave and a trail up to the top of the upper Ape Cave on Saturday and went to the Oregon Coast on Sunday. The weather was nice so we drove all the way to Manzanita before we were able to find reasonable beach access — people were everywhere even though it was freezing. Monday I took it easy until my flight out.
One of the themes you’ll see are that Alana and her boyfriend Jerek are very much nature people. Alana’s apartment is filled with plants labelled with their Latin names, dried plants/animal bones also labeled with Latin names, and Maggie, Alana’s adorably cross-eyed kitty. Throughout the trip, we examined lichens, prodded washed up jellyfish and explored pits along the trail path. It was in one of these little lava tubes, just a few feet deep, that I realized it and the Ape Cave are all just essentially holes in a giant pumice stone.
Here’s more pictures — they retell it a lot better than I could.
