29 July 2008

OREGON: Portland

We spent one full day and a night in Portland and then drove home via the Oregon Trail the following morning. The Columbia River area just outside of Portland is gorgeous, and I was happy to be seeing the Oregon Trail after all those hours in the 4th grade playing Oregon Trail, the greatest computer game ever crafted by human beings. I'm EXCELLENT at taking down a buffalo with only a keyboard spacebar and arrow keys.

We visited all the places you all suggested with more or less success (I have a very sad story about Voodoo Doughnut).

Near the Steel Bridge

At the Chinese Garden

At the Rose Garden

At the Japanese Garden

It was at the Japanese Garden that I learned the bad news about fish. AJ and I were standing at a waterfall looking at the giant koi in the pond at the bottom. She was admiring their interesting and unique coloring. I was bemoaning the creepiness of fish. And it occurred to me that the only thing that keeps fish from populating my nightmares is the fact that they have to stay in the water. They can't come up on land and get me with their nasty fish whiskers and their icky mouths and their slimy skin. And then AJ told me that there's a fish that comes ashore. It's not a catfish. It's a mudskipper. It's amphibious and it has elbows and it CREEPS me out. Bad and Wrong. Fish should not have elbows.

6 comments:

Moo said...

Oregon Trail, the computer game was the most fabulous game either. Did you make across all the way very often. I usually died before I made it to Oregon. I saw a newer version of it in the stores a couple of years ago.

Rebekah said...

i read a book once about a native american tribe that thought fish were evil. i think they had something there. i don't know how people can eat fish. it really bothers me.

MBC said...

Moo--I rarely made it to Oregon, but I always named the members of my party after real people, so I was mostly just concerned with preserving my friends and the boys I liked and seeing what terrible things happened to the people I didn't like (typhoid? river crossing accident?).

Rebekah--Surprisingly, I like to eat fish. By the time a fish comes to my plate, he just looks like dinner, and I can pretend he was never a googly-eyed, swimming monster.

Amy said...

Mudskippers are tiny, though. My kids love watching them at the zoo. They look more like frogs or some other yucky amphibian than fish.

I agree, though. Fish totally creep me out.

Alice said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alice said...

I like to catch fish. I do not like to kill them or skin them in order to eat them for dinner. I like to eat them for dinner though. The fight they put up is my most favorite part of fishing. (Actually, just the sitting at the lake on a nice summer day is my favorite part. So relaxing!) Touching slimy skin is not my favorite. The other day I caught a fish that was really spiny and almost cut my hand. Some would think this is a sign not to fish. I say, I should go again tomorrow!

P.S. Sorry about the blank comment from earlier. Dang typos.

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