July 4th Follies

It’s been our tradition since we moved to Seattle to do a short trip around July 4. The last two years we were in Vancouver. In previous years we’ve gone to the Olympic Peninsula. This year we’re in Hood River, Oregon.  Our home base is the Columbia Gorge Hotel, an old school hotel perched on a cliff. We stayed here 15 years or so ago. The items on the agenda (such as it is) are to visit the Maryhill Winery and do a day hike on Mount Hood. On the way home we’ll swing by Portland and have dinner at Paley’s Place. Malheureusement for Julian, we will be there nine days too early for the Paley’s Place Bastille Day celebration, featuring a meal made from a cannabis-fed pig. (Sounds to me like an episode of Portlandia: “Was Arnold fed an organically-grown, high CBD strain of cannabis?”)