Forest Park Hike
Jill and Tracy invite you to spend a day and evening with them on Thursday, October 1st for a day hike through Forest Park, followed by a short brewery-hop through the city of Portland to try some of Portland’s finest beers.
Forest Park is a large urban forest reserve just northwest of downtown Portland. We plan to meet at a trailhead on NW 53rd Drive at 9am on Thursday morning; driving to the trailhead is necessary. Bring your walking shoes and be ready for about a 5 mile loop through the park, which should take a couple of hours. Our trail path will be the following loop: Birch, Wildwood, Wild Cherry, Leif Erikson, Alder, Wildwood, Birch. Here is a google map for the trailhead (our start and stop point). There are parking spots right off of NW 53rd Drive.
We should be done with the hike by mid day. There will be plenty of time to clean up, regroup, and nap (if that’s your thing) before our beer drinking begins.
Beer Drinking!
Three stops are planned for our brew-hop. Driving is of course highly discouraged. But don’t worry, public transit (Trimet) can get us everywhere we want to go. Just bring some patience, a few bucks in spare change, and plan on travel times between brewery stops taking about 30 minutes. There are great food options at all stops. Times are approximate, but should give a general idea should people decided to meet up with us at later times. Here we go:
1. 4:00 to 5:30pm Breakside Brewery – the place where it all began for Jill and Tracy is the place we will begin our tour. Located in no-mans-land north Portland, it is admittedly a little out of the way. But, a very cool spot nonetheless. Created by a few ultimate frisbee playing friends who felt they needed a spot to congregate after an afternoon of playing in the seasonal frisbee leagues. Getting here from downtown Portland will require a mix of MAX (light-rail) and bus.
2. 6:30 to 8:00pm Stormbreaker Brewing – very cool location. Getting here will take a bus, MAX, and finally a short walk through the hip Mississippi neighborhood. There are several outstanding bars and eateries on this street (think pizza, Thai, German, and other food carts), including one of Portland’s best: the hole-in-the-wall Mexican institution known as ¿Por Que No?
3. 9:00 to 10:30pm Deschutes Brewery – a good place to end, and close to the heart of downtown Portland. Deschutes represents Oregon brewing at it’s largest (well, almost) and most commercial. Should prove to be a bit of a contrast to the preceding two, but great nonetheless. Deschutes is out of Bend, Oregon, but they have a big and rather nice outpost in downtown Portland. MAX will take us right into downtown from stop #2.
Portland Hotels
We have reserved a block of 10 hotel rooms in downtown Portland for anyone interested, and encourage people to use them. The prices are still kind of high though, as the Portland Marathon occurs that weekend (sorry about that!). It may be worthwhile to try something like travelocity or kayak to find a better deal.
The Benson Hotel has some rooms reserved for us for both Thursday night and Friday night, starting at $229 per night. Reservations can be made for one night or both nights, doesn’t matter. If you do decide to stay at the Benson, you must call 1-888-523-6766 and ask to book rooms for the “Tracy Morgan Family Party” in order to get this rate. Please do not mention anything about the wedding when booking these rooms please. Reservations must be made by August 18th to get this price.
Please RSVP!
If you think you would like to join us for this day of activities, then please do let us know. It’s helpful for us to get an approximate head count. Any and all are invited!
moore.jill.m
tracydmorgan@gmail.com