Portland, Oregon - June 29th, 2024

Big cities are sometimes hard to navigate in an RV. The main issue is usually finding a place to park. Portland has some public transportation options once you park, but it took a little while for us to figure out the ropes.

Saturday, we spent all day in Portland. We didn’t want to try to drive and park our rig downtown since it is a big city, so we parked in Washington Park. We saw there was a large parking lot by the zoo. At 9:30 am, we had no trouble finding a spot. Parking was $8 for all day.

Washington Park is large, with hiking trails, the Oregon Zoo, the World Forestry Center Discovery Museum, Hoyt Aboretum, a playground, tennis courts, an archery range, picnic areas, statues, memorials, a rose garden, and a Japanese Garden. Some of the attractions charge an admission fee, such as the zoo, museum, and Japanese Garden. The rest are free of charge. A free shuttle bus can transport you around the park, running every 15 minutes.

From the zoo parking lot, we walked the trails over to the International Rose Test Garden. It was about two miles away. We used several different named trails, but it was easy to just follow the signs to the gardens. It was a lovely walk through the woods, with posted signs identifying some of the trees.

The trail passed by the playground and the Elephant House, where Rosie the Elephant lived in the 1950’s, before the zoo moved to its present location. We strolled through the Rose Garden, then stopped at the food truck by the Garden Store for a lemonade. A musician was playing in the garden.

Then we tried to find the Portland Trolley Hop-on Hop-off stop. The stop was not marked and apparently there was a short road closure near the Rose Garden that just re-opened that day, adding to the confusion as we asked around for where the stop was. Our plan was to ride the Trolley for a narrated tour of Portland to get an overview along with providing us transportation to downtown. We bought our trolley tickets online and managed to flag down the trolley, even though we were not standing exactly at the right place.

We rode the trolley down to Pearl District where we hopped off to find a place to eat lunch. We wandered around for a little while. Deschutes Brewery was doing a lively business, but we ate at one in Bend, so we wanted to try something different. We found a little Thai restaurant called Zab Pinto. Ann had the house curry with chicken while Keith ordered the chicken Pad Thai. Our meals were delicious and filling. Keith couldn’t even finish his.

Then we went back to the trolley stop to wait for the next trolley. They only have one trolley running, so it comes by only once an hour. We thought we arrived back at the stop before the time they dropped us off, but we must have just missed it. So we waited. More people showed up to wait with us. And we waited some more. After waiting about 50 minutes, we gave up. The next stop, in Old Town, was only a 15 minute walk away. We decided to walk.

The only problem with walking, was that we didn’t know where the next trolley stop was. Again, the previous stop and the next stop were not marked. It was Saturday and the Saturday Market was in full swing. It was the 50th Anniversary of the market, which runs every weekend from March until Christmas Eve. There were a lot of local merchants and artists selling their wares, mostly various arts and crafts. Live music was playing and a few food trucks kept everyone fed. We spotted the Great NW Ice Cream truck and waited in a long line for some. We each had a scoop of mint chip with a scoop of salted caramel in a cone. It hit the spot.

As we were wandering around the market, we ran into another family that had been waiting for the trolley with us. They kindly told us where the trolley stop was, just past Pine Street. We probably would not have found it otherwise. They also told us about what time the driver expected to be back at the stop. Thank you!

We were able to catch the trolley again and finish the tour. It was 4 pm by the time we reached the official starting point of the tour and they announced that the 4 pm departure was the last trolley of the day, so we stayed on to get back to Washington Park. We weren’t too concerned about getting back to Washington Park, as it looked like there were plenty of public transportation options.

The trolley dropped us off in Washington Park, at a slightly different location that it picked us up from earlier that day. Our biggest complaints about the trolley were that drop off spots were not labeled, did not follow the maps posted in their brochures and website, and did not seem to follow any of the schedules. We think the only predictable time was when they left the first stop at the beginning of the tour downtown.

In hindsight, we probably should have done things a little differently. We felt like we spent way too much time waiting for trolleys. A better use of time might have been to take the light rail from the zoo to downtown, then take the trolley from the starting point and stay on for the whole tour, about one hour. Then wander around downtown, revisiting the parts we wanted to see, which you can see better on foot. Then we could have taken the light rail back to Washington Park and wandered around the park at our leisure, and ride the Washington Park shuttle if we got tired of walking.

From the Rose Garden, we grabbed a quick drink from the food truck before hopping on the Washington Park shuttle back to the Zoo. It started to sprinkle as we boarded the shuttle. By the time we reached Red Tail, it was raining harder. It’s a good thing we took the shuttle, because we didn’t bring rain jackets with us. The weather forecast didn’t show any rain. We should know better than to trust the forecast.

Then it was an hour drive back to our campground, through the heavy traffic and confusing streets of Portland. Mount Hood was not visible on the way this time because of the clouds again. The day was long and exhausting and we were thankful to be back “home” at camp.

Now that we know our way around Portland better, the next time we visit should go better. If you’re going to Portland, hopefully we’ve given you some ideas to make your experience a little smoother than ours.

Check out our related video: Portland, Oregon

(Ann)