Tues. Sept 12, 2023 Springfield to Newberg, OR
As per usual, we woke up and nothing was open yet. We sat around the hotel room. I read my book while munching on the Lucky Charms and drinking Red Bull. I ended up finishing my book.
Our first stop of the day was the University of Oregon to see the football stadium. We stopped in at Ducks store, Brent got a t-shirt and new running shoes and a shot glass for our friend Carter. We could hear the marching band practicing. We also heard the football team practicing, but we couldn’t see them. Their field was surrounded by giant privacy hedges. One coach was filming it from a cherry picker and there was fake crowd noise being piped in.
We drove to downtown Eugene. We parked the car, failed to pay at the metre with card and gave it what little change I had left, a whopping 15 cents for 7 minutes. We walked over to Voodoo Doughnuts. We got a Butterfinger donut (chocolate cake base with vanilla glaze and crushed Butterfinger) and a Pop Tart donut (strawberry-filled yeasted donut with vanilla glaze). And of course, coffee, so I could continue functioning. Both donuts were so damn good. Blue Star paled in comparison. We walked back to the car to put more on the metre. Max’s Tavern was only a 15-minute walk away. After some more struggle we got the card payment to work. Max’s was supposedly like Moe’s bar from The Simpsons. It had just opened and there was only one other person in there. The cider on tap I wanted was out, so instead I had a can of 2 Towns pineapple cider, it was delicious. Brent had dressed up for the occasion, white t-shirt and jeans, had a PBR, which we guessed was about the closest to Duff? He also ordered a breakfast burrito, so good, but nowhere hear the level of the one in Wyoming. The bar was quite Moe’s-y. A little bit of a dive atmosphere but also comfy. They even had a Duff hat on display. One employee was talking about social media posting being a pain in the ass.
We drove back to the University of Oregon campus to see the track & field team. We wandered around it, the sun was beating down. We hit a dead end and had to backtrack. I felt awkward the whole time as they were setting up for a weekend event. Up next, we drove to the Woodburn Outlets. On the highway we saw a sign for the exit to the State Capitol. DETOUR! We saw the capitol building in Salem, OR. It wasn’t as pretty as some of the other ones. We passed another road sign for the 45th parallel, halfway between the equator and the north pole. I shopped for an hour at the outlets. I was on the hunt for purple Levi’s but no luck. It’s a good thing there was a Starbucks so I could refuel.
We headed out to wine country. I was skeptical. At Rex Hill Winery we had Seven Earths chardonnay and a Willamette Valley pinot noir. We traded halfway. The chardonnay was better, which is odd because this region is known for pinot noir. The set-up was meh, they only do full pours, no flights. I had been expecting a sampling. We sat on the patio, looking out past the road at the dormant fields. You could not tell we were right off a busy highway.
There was a liquor store right next door to our hotel. I went in while Brent checked us in. I didn’t have any ciders left, I had assumed we would be having a bottle of wine. There was a lady in the store that was just absolutely flabbergasted that the cashier had the same name and same birthday as her. Her partner could not care less that she had found her name twin.
I had just enough time to change before we had to head back out. We had dinner reservations at the Joel Palmer House. Dinner was AMAZING. Easily one of the best dining experiences we’ve ever had. Even if it made me sorta sick. The restaurant cuisine was based around mushrooms. I love mushrooms. My body, not so much. Halfway through I was so bloated. It physically hurt. We had opted for the omakase version, getting small portions with the option to keep going past the set menu. Apparently, the record was 14, which at first seemed totally do-able. Expect that by dish #8 I was struggling. I had wanted to tap out at that point, but they said that there was only one more sharing dish left before the option to tap out. It was a NY striploin and it was so damn good. Even if every bite caused my stomach to protest. The dishes were all so varied and it was easy to forget that they were mushroom based. Even the dessert had elements of mushroom in it. The dessert was a show-stopper. It was a giant sharing plate with a forest theme. Also unique was the cheese course. They had a variety of cheese to choose from ranging from mild to strong and we could choose as much as we wanted and it was cut right there for us. The Cotswolds cheese was the best, the Roquefort blue did not go down easy and caused a ruckus. By far my favourite of the dinner was the mushroom soup, it had a mushroom drawn in it with cream. It was easily one of the best things I have ever eaten. Ever. After that giant dessert plate, I was ready for a nap. But wait, there’s more! Apparently, there was a tiny ending dessert. We each got a small chocolate with mushroom pop rocks. It was so damn good! With dinner we’d each had a glass of wine. Brent had a glass of the JPH private cuvee 2015 pinot noir from Oregon. It was ok. But I much preferred my glass of rose of pinot noir from Rambeaux in the Willamette Valley.
The TV guide in our room was inaccurate. The channel that the show we wanted to watch wasn’t available. But I found it under a different number? We were watching old episodes of Bob’s Burgers because there was nothing else on. The MTV Music Awards were on four channels. The Avid Cider Co. blackberry cider was delicious and my stomach was surprisingly ok with it. I tried reading Girl on the Velvet Swing (NF) during commercials while searching desperately for Nick @ Nite so I could watch Friends. No luck, and the book wasn’t that good either.