Leave Canada out of this – or put a cork in it.
This small-city American girl thinks of Portland, Oregon as a very big city. For a more small-town experience, you might be happier hitting Portland, Maine in the summer. There are beaches.
Out of more than 18,000 incorporated towns in the United States, Portland Oregon is about the 30th-largest.
Aren’t people always talking about heart-shaped butts? Or is that faces?
ETA: Isn’t being the 30th-largest unincorporated town kind of like being the 30th most solvent bankrupt company?
I have a couple of friends from the Netherlands who have traveled to the US repeatedly for extended road trips. They seemed to take great pleasure in getting off the beaten path.
There may well be visitors like that, but as another poster says it is usually people visiting friends. I’ve visited the US 6 times, one on a specific holiday to NYC, with a trip to my cousins in CT, but other times just to see friends. It gives one a great insight into American culture and small town/suburban life. NYC feels quite different to most other parts of the US I’ve visited. I’d like to spend more time in the South as I’ve only ever been in VA as yet. From big cities to small towns I’ve seen plenty that has interested me, some of it tailored to tourists, other things not so.
Is Portland, Oregon, really that large a city? It’s about the size of Edinburgh. As a potential tourist, it’s not like I’m hoping to hang around in the suburbs or further hinterland. It looks like a very nice place in a nice part of the world. Perhaps I can get a taxi to Portland, Maine, if I don’t like it. 
Wikipedia says the metro area has 2.2 million residents. Sounds like a big city to me. I’ve always lived in metro areas of 150K-300K. Portland, Maine has a metro area of about 500K… enough for good restaurants, not too many to hamper driving.
It’s a bit far - you may just want to take the train instead…
(Actually, a train ride from Portland to Portand would be an awesome way to spend a vacation, if you like train rides.)
Incorporated.
If I’d left out that qualifier, the 18,000+ figure would have been higher, but the 30th ranking would be unchanged.
Portland Oregon is a major city. Not a world city, but not in any sense a small town.
I like trains. That must be a possible journey, don’t care if it’s a very quick one. Hmmm
Some European students I knew drove from Houston to Big Bend National Park over a Christmas holiday. Yes, the park is amazing. But they couldn’t stop talking about the trip there–they just drove & drove & they were still in Texas! They were amazed because that long a trip would cover several countries back home. And the route is not especially picturesque; mostly flat, the unlike Monument Valley that John Ford made the icon of the American West.
I vividly remember a childhood trip where I discovered the beauty of New York State & New England. There were granite mountains, great rivers & amazing lakes, along with small towns like the pictures in books & in old movies. (We don’t have red barns in my part of Texas.) I know foreign tourists love our great western parks, but the East has a fine combination of great cities, small towns & nature.
Definitely possible. However, I’m having trouble getting it to work on amtrak.com going west to east. If you want to follow the sun, you can do it for $665.
It could be done. I checked out various Portland, ME (POR) to Portland, OR (PDX) routes here. Take the Downeaster, the Lake Shore Limited & the Empire Builder. Or maybe add the Cascades to the last bit. $411.00* not *following the sun.
Hmmm, indeed…
Portland OR to Boston, MA via Chicago can be had for $277. Takes three days. (I used the interactive route atlas/trip planner). I don’t believe there’s an Amtrak station in Portland, ME; it seems that from Boston you have to complete the trip by bus that you book through Amtrak.
The California Zephyr, which runs San Francisco to Chicago, is supposed to be a hell of a trip. There’s special glass roofed observation cars.
For a large city, and in the sense of the historic demographics which comprised mainly white people and black people, I think Chicago is the “real America” in a way. The immigrant contributions are there, and there still are ethnic neighborhoods, but in general the sense I’ve gotten when visiting Chicago is that the immigrants, or their descendants, are more assimilated. I think that’s definitely true compared with NYC or L.A., where we have more first generation newcomers, who often don’t yet speak English, and work in marginalized sectors of the economy. Then there’s the “educated” Chicago accent which is supposed to be the standard of public discourse and broadcasting. Nearly forgotten, at least by outsiders, is the Chicago working class accent; best illustrated by a National Lampoon newspaper parody of many years ago, “The Chicagah Tribune”. In short, Chicago has all the pieces that we think of as going to make up American culture–immigrants, but also a high degree of assimilation, as well as a standard of educated speech but also a strong working class tradition. And the Cubs.
I ran into a German family in Yosemite (actually I shared my campsite with them - they had failed to make reservations and they did not realize that Yosemite books up 6 months in advance). They were hiking the beauty of Yosemite, then were driving to San Francisco. I think they started in LA. So in a trip they got LA, the farming central valley, Yosemite, the drive to San Francisco from Yosemite, then I think Napa. Pretty good feel for a part of America - all of it real.
Fine I’m a romantic. I also live within 30 minutes of millions of acres of wild land (lions, tigers and bears, you bet!) and about an hour from 1,000 year old living trees, the only actively growing glaciers in America outside of Alaska, and other wild and unique things deliberately left off of tourist maps and USGS maps as well.
Yes, I’ve spent considerable time overseas, thankyouverymuch.
The very concept that land, and all that naturally dwells within, deserve standing on its merits is an American invention that have been exported around the world. It was first embodied with the national park idea directly in 1870, which eventually led to the creation of Yellowstone National Park. But the idea that truly wild land should exist in its own right goes back further, but was not directly applied until the 1964 Wilderness Act. Other countries today may have national parks (none older than Yellowstone), and there may be virgin land in other places “older” than that found in America but the very idea that such land should exist on their own merits is strictly an American invention.
Drive from Seattle WA to Bozeman MT not on I-90 and hit Glacier Nat Park, in Bozeman turn around and drive back to Portland through Jellystone . See: Seattle, Cascades, Desert, Farm Country, Rockies, MT plains, Rockies, Hells Canyon, Columbia River and wineries, and make sure to hit the Pendleton Roundup for a good rodeo.
That’s all you need to see
:smack:
I wasn’t implying that I think Wal Mart is the pinnacle of American culture and there’s no discount shopping for cheap Chinese crap overseas.
I was implying that, if you want to see the people of real America, go to Wal Mart. That’s where you will find a very broad cross-section of demographics.
That said, I hate Wal Mart and do not shop there. So you’d miss the Wal Mart haters.