chimmytime

Mammoth Mountain has always been a favorite of mine, but the costs of going there has started to get ridiculous. I’ve heard of good things about Brian Head Utah and teamed up with CJ’s family to take a trip out there for President’s weekend. We also convinced Joy’s friends, and Ben and Tiff to go up the same weekend as well.

Thursday night we took off after work and headed to Vegas to sleep for the night before driving Friday night up to the Mountains which is 3 hours north of Las Vegas. We got a super cheap rate at the Rio hotel fro $14 (+40$ resort fee). First stop before checking into our hotel was to get some dinner at Izakaya Go since the kids wanted udon and Joy and I wanted some drinks.

Saturday was the most calm day of the trip as we only had one thing on the agenda and that was to do some shopping at the Nike Corporate store. We went to breakfast back in downtown at Tasty n Alder for a delicious breakfast biscuit sandwich and a bloody mary.

Jeremy had worked his magic the months leading up to the trip to get us entrance tickets to the Nike Corporate store where you need to know someone who works there. Obviously it isn’t totally exclusive if you can’t tell by the huge line just to get in, but a 40% discount off new releases is something to worth getting. We probably spent two hours shopping for all our families and that was still a bit rushed. I walked out of there with a couple of pairs of shoes for myself, one for Joy and some clothes for the kids.

After shopping we went back to Portland to walk around the Saturday Morning Farmers Market and get a picture in front of the Keep Portland Weird sign.

Our last meal of the trip was to get some sandwiches at Lardo where we split a porchetta sandwich and a Nashville (not so) hot chicken sandwich. The porchetta sandwich is one of the better ones i’ve had.

With a single bag full of new Nike gear we headed back to the airport to close out our Dad’s trip out.

Friday morning we woke up early and headed across state lines to Washington to do some white water rafting on the White Salmon River. We actually got a raft to ourselves along with two other rafts filled with a church group and planned a half day trip down the river that would end with a 12′ water fall drop at Husum Falls.

Our guide gave us the basics about getting in, tucking in, and holding on as we go over the falls. It was fun but a little anti-climatic since we could really see anything as we went over but at least we got the pictures to see it from above. At the half way point we stopped at a flat landing where we were suppose to be taken back to our car, but our guide offered to have us continue down the river to the end and we decided to just go since we were having so much fun.

For dinner we had worked up a huge appetite so we feasted at Ox with lots of meats.

After dinner we went to downtown Portland to do some bar hopping ending up at Deschutes Brewery to finish the night.

I had been joking for years with some of Joy’s friends that the dads should go somewhere since the wives always go to Vegas every winter. After much debate between Vegas and other places we actually got around to planning a trip out to Portland.

Tony being the youthful one in the group took the 5am flight out while Jeremy and I took the more casual noon flight out to Portland where Tony picked up the rental car and our AirBNB for the trip. Our first stop for a late lunch was at a Thai place called Hat Yai who serves a really good fried chicken along with sticky rice, roti and curry which really hit the spot before we headed to bars for some beers.

After dropping off our things at the house we headed to Culmination Brewing Company where we sampled lots of sour beers.

For dinner we went to Screen Door for some BBQ and southern-ish food.

For the finale of the night we hopped on some scooters and had our own little tour of the Hawthorne area.