Once you’ve met Mama Pea in person and bogarted all her Vegan Chocolate Chip cookies, what else is there to do really?

OMG so good. Bonus points if you can spot the salt!

Well, it happened to be a gorgeous day for Portland in March so we headed down to the riverfront with the dog. It’s so funny how many people look at Cady like they’ve never seen a dog before. She’s like the most generic of mutts! Maybe it’s her fancy harness they’re so entranced by. Anyway, the attention is weird.

Pardon the woozy wallpaper.

This is not a great pic because they’re closed, but the food cart scene in Portland is out of control! In a good way. I’d be a total cart rat if I lived there!
Every few blocks downtown looks like this! And one of them serves a hamburger that has grilled cheese sandwiches in lieu of buns! GET. OUT.Nope, you can’t get rid of us that easily.

Husband with 2 of his 3 loves: his dog and his IPhone.

We heart Portland!

I’ve been coming to the Saturday market for years – it rocks!

Pretty soon we were heading to the Alberta Arts District to meet friends at the Tin Shed – another dog friendly restaurant! I didn’t take any pics but I had the nachos and Chris had the Baby Beluga – Roasted yams, onion, zucchini, mushroom, garlic & black lentils in a yellow curry sauce, served over fresh spinach & jasmine rice, topped with raisins, peanuts and avocado. Yep, it was a vegetarian day for the Carbzillas!But wait, we have one more day of this quickie vacation …. tomorrow includes 4 kids, folks we barely know, and a trip to Burgerville.

So after I got home from grocery shopping tonight, I got an email from Farty Girl saying she couldn’t comment on my posts. I’ll get my tech guy right on that.

I was thinking it was a little strange I hadn’t heard from ANYONE in a while.

WTF WordPress? After I had nothing but nice things to say about you!

(Under the toasty So Cal sun, Deb is laughing at me right now.)

I’ll get that fixed and Portland Part Two will be up shortly. You’ve actually already read the best half, but I’ll give you the rest of the story….cuz I’m thorough like that.

Hmmm, thinking of what kind of prize I can send Farty Girl for notifying me. I’m gonna come up with something good!

The Carbzilla family packs a lot into a day! This 48-hour trip alone, we saw 14 friends if you count kids and significant others (which I just did).

We hopped into the car about 9:15 am and by 12:15, almost to the minute, we pulled into Multnomah Village where we were having a little Bloggie Meet-up. Since we were early, we walked around the little town which is really very cute. Lucky for us, the weather was nice! We could have found the dog park and given Cady a run after being in the car for three hours, but I wasn’t exactly wearing my hike-around-town shoes.

Soon enough, we found ourselves at the Lucky Lab brewery where we grabbed a Triple Threat IPA (well, Chris did) and ordered a veggie pie.

We should have just ordered slices, but the valet guys at our hotel were super grateful for the leftovers!

Soon enough, we met up with Mama Pea, Kalin, her fiance, and Susan and her family! Behold the bloggers:

Mama Pea, Kalin, Susan, and Me.

They all know each other from before, but it didn’t take long before we were all chatting like I’d known them too (and bonus points to Chris and Josh for playing along). Even Cady was a good sport and only went after Susan’s puppy, Porter, one leetle time.

Waiting for Josh to drop some pepperoni.

Mama Pea, as sweet and thoughtful as her blog portrays, brought some of her famous (to her loyal readers) Vegan cookies which *may* have had a hotel photo shoot a little later on in the day. YUM!!!!

Turns out, Kalin and Josh are getting married the same day as Janetha and Marshall are! (Cue Twilight Zone music.)

After lunch, Chris and I headed to John’s Marketplace where Kalin and Josh said our minds would be blown by their beer selection.

Not so fancy on the outside.

Suffice to say, minds blown:

This is but a teensy fraction of what they offer. If you're a beer person, run don't walk!

We picked up a couple bottles for the friends we were seeing later and headed to our hotel, the super dog-friendly Hotel Monaco!

Look at all the dogs checked in!

Somehow we had gotten a suite AND a free Starbucks gift card! Whoohoo. This was the biggest Kimpton room I’d ever stayed in (and certainly the nice hotel Cady’s ever stayed in!)

I love all the Kimpton Hotels for their whimsical flair!

Handicapped-access shower would have been perfect for giving Cady a bath!

Note that there will be no weighing while on vacation (even a 48 hour vacation). Ok, I totally lied. I did get on it and when it said I weighed about ten lbs more than I do at home, I futzed with the dial until it said I was at my goal weight. I call that “positive reinforcement.” But, that was the day after I took these pictures:Those are Mama Pea’s famous (to us) Vegan Chocolate Chip cookies. Seriously, ridiculously good! So good they had their own bathroom photo shoot while Chris ran out to the Apple Store to buy a new IPhone charger. While he was gone, I also did 15 push-ups, like a good fit food blogger.

Since it was such a beautiful day, we went out for a long walk before meeting friends for dinner, but that will have to wait for Part Two….

Two essentials for a road trip:

Snackbag

Doggers

(Egads….that window!)

Details of our Portland trip coming up soon, including a meet-up with Mama Pea who’s just as warm and gracious as you’d expect her to be. Not to mention the fact that she makes the best Vegan chocolate chip cookies on the whole planet!