Air Travel

 Avoid it if you can.

We booked our Southwest flight to Portland well ahead of our travel date.  The flight to Portland by way of Oakland featured the usual inconveniences, but was largely uneventful.

We changed our return reservation to a day earlier than originally planned.  When we got to the baggage counter at PDX we were informed that the flight had been cancelled.  A helpful baggage person got us assigned to a later flight.  That one ended up being too late to make a connection in Oakland, so we ended up with yet a different flight.  In the end we spent about eight hours sitting in Portland's airport.

Our 737 landed in Oakland at the same time our flight onto Albuquerque started boarding.  Our arrival gate and the departure gate were at opposite ends of the terminal.  Unlike Portland, there were no moving sidewalks at Oakland,  so I hobbled along at the best speed I could muster for what seemed like about half a mile.  We made it in time to get aboard, but I arrived in pretty poor shape.

Travel

Our trip to Portland went mostly as planned, with a surprise ending.  Changing planes in Oakland provided  a welcome glance at San Francisco including the Bay Bridge, the downtown and San Bruno Mountain where I had spent many hours hawk watching.

(Right click image to open in a separate tab to view full-size image.)

In Portland we stayed in an elegant apartment on the bank of the Clackamas, surrounded by the huge trees that are everywhere.

The Clackamas has about the same flow as the  Rio Grande, being only waist deep in the middle.

Lots of wildflowers and birds, including a majority of vultures.  My daughter was lucky enough to see some aerial combat between a pair of Osprey and a Bald Eagle.

My best find along the river bank was wild blackberries,  which evoke my best memories of both San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest.

The wedding which brought us to Portland included an hour's boat trip on the Willamette.  Portland is a marvelous city; I think it may have doubled in size since my last visit.  The bridges were familiar; I was impressed with the number of modern-looking skyscrapers and the endless public open spaces.

(I only got a few shots on film on this trip.  I did better on earlier trips to Portland in 2008 and 2011.)

Our visit was brought to an abrupt end when -- on the day before the wedding ceremony -- the groom tested positive for COVID.  So we moved our departure up a day, which resulted in a complicated flight home.  A day after our return to Albuquerque we both tested positive.