Last weekend was a 4-day weekend for me, and Julie and I decided last minute to drive up to Vancouver Washington to visit her Sister and family.
We had a plan…
1) Visit the In-Laws
2) Visit some tourist traps on the trip to break up the drive
3) Visit 2 places in Portland Oregon featured on Man Vs. Food on TV
We left early in the morning and tried to enjoy the 10+ hour drive. I have an application on my iPhone that tells me where all the fun tourist traps are, so we stopped a couple of times and took our photos. I love these goofy tourist spots!
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/10926
- Yreka, California – Metal Dragon
Just north of Yreka on the east side of I-5 (by the northbound lanes when you are starting your ascent of the Siskiyous) stands a large metal dragon. The dragon is about as far north of Yreka as the large metal cow is south. Fearsome looking creature!
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/search/tip
Once in Vancouver, the family all went to Portland to visit Voodoo Donuts. Voodoo Donuts is a wacky place with voodoo doll-shaped donuts, x-rated donuts, and every wacky, weird flavor you can think of (like a maple bar with bacon on top).
Check out a video clip from “man vs Food”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnVK3fdPkuo
That night, we went to Salvador Molly’s, a place we saw on TV that had a “Great Balls of Fire” challenge. Of you can eat 5 super-hot habanero fritters and salsa, you get your picture taken and posted to their “Wall of Flame”. This weekend was special because of valentine’s day…the “Love Stinks and Burns” promo was going on, so in addition to being hot, garlic and Blue cheese was cooking in the fritters to stink them up in addition to being massively hot.
1st fritter with salsa: no problem
2nd fritter: Piece of cake
3rd one: Getting hot
4th ball of fire: Crap…my mouth is on fire!
5th one: AHHHHH HOTHOTHOTHOT!!!
I ate all 5 of the habanero fritters and salsa, so the waitress took my photo and printed it out for me to sign. It’s on the wall with all the other fools who did the challenge too
Check out a video from the TV clip “Man vs Food:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA1nAwwwAHE
I found out that I also have relatives in the Portland area (apparently close to Salvador Molly’s, I found out later), but just couldn’t fit everything into this short trip….next time for sure! Heck, I might even do the challenge again
The next day was time to leave (I think my mouth had finally stopped burning by that point) and we left at 5am to beat the Portland commute traffic that we got stuck in driving up. We made it out of the area with no problems and stopped at some more tourist traps:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/1054
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/2194
It was a fun trip, but we fit so much into a short time that it’s gonna take a week to recover.
Worth it!!















