PNW: Portland

My close friend, Marci, and I ventured out to the Pacific Northwest together for a mid-summer vacation before she was due to start a position at a big law firm in Milwaukee. Marci, coming from Wisconsin, and I met in Portland to kick off the epic two week trip. We greeted one another with hugs and laughter (there's always laughter when Marci's around!), strapped our huge packs -- and huge might be an understatement in terms of the size of Marci's body bag -- to our backs and headed off to explore the cities, rain forests and mountains of the PNW.

First, we spent a day or so bumming around Portland, getting our hipster-loving on. We hit all the hot spots we could including the Japanese Garden, Powell's, Voodoo's, and many, many restaurants.