Workshops, Waterfalls, and Wineries: Our Trip to Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon.  A city known for its phenomenal coffee, craft beer, food carts, and bridges.  A city surrounded by picturesque waterfalls, rivers, and the rolling hills of wine country.  So naturally, when I learned that the Mystic Seminars 2015 were going to be held in this amazing city, I had multiple exciting reasons to visit!

While I don’t have a ton of pictures of my time spent during the Mystic Seminars, (I was too busy taking notes and chugging coffee), pictures wouldn’t have captured my wonderful experience at this conference.  Flying across the country solo without knowing a sole person that was attending the seminars, I was able to network with people from across the globe and hear amazing speakers such as Susan Stripling, Sergio, and Dan O’Day, to name a few.  Each of the three days was spent at full steam, starting at 8:30AM and ending at 9:30PM.  And, if we still had energy, we could attend social activities such as bowling and karaoke until the wee hours of the morning.  Special thanks to Walter van Dusen for creating and organizing The Mystic Seminars!

Just a few of the speakers in action…

After three full days of note taking and networking, I met up with Barry, who flew out to Portland so we could explore the city and surrounding wine country together.

A few touristy pictures: me in front of the downtown Portland food carts and Barry eating his first Voodoo Doughnut!

We visited a few craft breweries: Deschutes, Rogue, and Burnside.  While we loved all of them, the Sweet Heat apricot/jalapeño beer at Burnside was our favorite of the trip.

Based on a local’s recommendation, we traveled to EaT Oyster Bar.  This restaurant has a lot of character, and the oysters were second to none!  Totally worth the drive across the river.

Our oysters being shucked…

A random vintage Land Rover right in downtown Portland… he was so excited to get a picture with it!

A spur-of-the-moment trip to Multnomah Falls.  And yes, clad in my suede boots, sweater tights, and skirt, I hiked a 1.5 mile trail with 11 switch backs to the top!

I’m not a fan of heights, but made it to the top of the falls and clutched my camera for dear life as I bent over the side railing to take pictures  to show the height of the falls.   It was a beautiful view, though!

On to the Willamette Valley wineries!  We stayed at Youngberg Hill Bed and Breakfast, a lovely B&B that sat atop the hills of their vineyard.  The views from their hilltop were absolutely stunning.  We received a special Welcome wine tasting and immediately following, we fed the local residents of the B&B.

Naturally, we had to get portraits of the B&B’s residents…

A few parting shots as we wine tasted and ate our way around the Willamette Valley.  Pictures below are at Thistle, a restaurant in McMinnville (amazing pre-prohibition drinks, and a menu themed to match.)

We visited a lot of wineries, but some of our favorites were Youngberg Hill, Saffron Fields, WillaKenzie, Elk Cove, and Colene Clemens– all of which are pictured below.