This was a day of challenges and disappointments. For quite some time I have expounded upon the great chicken fried steak breakfast that can be found at Dean’s, a greasy spoon in Clackamas, OR. I eagerly awaited our return to Troutdale so we could make the half hour drive to Dean’s where I could feast on their formerly stellar recipe.
Something has changed. When my chicken fried steak was plopped down in front of me today, I could see something was amiss. The coating texture was changed. The consistency of the crunchy coating had changed. Something was fishy. The sausage gravy was still the same but the whole product was fundamentally different. When I queried the staff about the new recipe, they all gave me the fish eye and vowed that nothing had changed.
I can still recommend Dean’s as a great place to eat a hearty breakfast but their chicken fried steak, which until recently was my #1 pick for this pedestrian fare in the whole U.S.A., or at least that part I have visited, has been removed from the lofty spot and been replaced with the dish of the same name at Jake’s, in Bend. I am crestfallen.
After our adequate but hardly superior breakfast, we embarked on what turned out to be an odyssey through metropolitan Portland to a shoe store called Oddballs. They specialize in footwear for those cursed with feet larger than size 13, filling a niche that is poorly supplied by ordinary retailers. We were making good headway on our crosstown route until we left the east bank of the Willamette River and crossed the bridge into deepest, darkest downtown Portland. There we encountered not just one but two parades and the cops had all the roads blocked from downtown to NW. We wandered crazily through streets near the river but were foiled in every attempt to cross the the amazingly serpentine parade route. We tried flanking the parade route by driving immediately adjacent to the Willamette on the west bank but we were stymied by traffic enforcement Nazis. We attempted a long west end sweep but ran out of roads going where we wanted to go. Eventually, through bitter frustration, we drove south, directly away from the parades for several miles and then tried to get on I-5 north to bypass the parades. I-5 was stopped, mostly by an abundance of vehicles that had been caught in the downtown parade nightmare and were attempting to escape it crossing the Willamette back to the side where there were fewer parades and blocked thoroughfares guarded by armed Gestapo.
After a few very slow miles, we were able to access NW Portland, again crossing the Willamette but in a different spot. After some disgusted exclamations and more U-turns, we made it to Oddballs. Management’s policy must have changed somewhat there because where lots of big, ugly Frankenstein boots were prominently displayed on previous visits there are now many forms of burglary shoes and shoes for the dead. There were four boot possibilities. I selected one of the limited options and the shoe nerd went in the back only to return to tell me they did not have my size although he had some that were easily identified as way too big. We left with some socks.
Peggy then suggested a Dick’s store and found one quite nearby that we could access without crossing any parade routes. Amazingly, we found a couple of types of clodhoppers that I will wear and feel good. I left with a pair of Danner’s.
Disgusted with taking most of a day to buy a pair of shoes and eat breakfast, we agreed to return to the Barbarian Invader, naps and ample liquor supplies. Peggy already enjoyed a short power nap and I’m thinking about maybe dozing off myself.
We will be out of here tomorrow. I like the location of Sandy River RV but it has a few drawbacks that count against it. There is a skinny, 20 mph road in through Historic Troutdale coming into the park and a bridge too narrow for two cars to pass going out the other way. There are multiple adjacent train tracks and, based on the number of horn blasts I heard during our stay, Burlington Northern Santa Fe is doing a big business. Their engineers are quite dutiful when required to sound the regulation 2 longs, a short and a long blast at each of the myriad nearby grade crossings. The Sandy River RV wifi sometimes works but not if some Republican pulls his enormous rolling estate up alongside your trailer, blocking the antenna. Another weird item – the park management has admonitions and threats printed in their literature forbidding the use or possession of marijuana within their facility despite pot being perfectly legal in the remainder of the state. Just old jerks, I guess.