NEVER, EVAR, go to the Clakamas Town Center, EVER!

Sooo, Lacey and I had a somewhat exciting day in Portland yesterday. In order to get to Portland (2 hours away), at a respectable hour, acceptable for visiting the reason for leaving our little town, I had to get up early. A bit hard to do after staying up late the night before, but it wasn't anything a little mocha latté with toffee could not fix. The car ride up was quiet nice, listening to Polaris, and Heavenly, and stoping at a rest stop where we gawked at oddites of human nature (put in a very polite way). The first thing on our agenda, the thing we had come up for, and what we had to do before skipping about Portland: Visit a friend of Lacey's mom. Because we had no interest in this at all, we were dropped of at the Clakamas Town Center, the nearest thing of entertainment to this mystery friends house. This seemed like a jump in the wrong direction from where we thought we would be, at the Lloyd center. We were told that this would be a short visit and we would only have to spend maybe 2 hours at the most there. This was not the case at all. We spent close to 3 and a half hours, glancing in stores, staring blankly at the "World Largest Antique Carousel Collection" (it was not that big), looking up phone numbers in the phone book and making phone calls to people we did not know, and getting lost in the bizarre layout of this hell hole. The only entertainment we found was writing "when they're parking their cars on your chest, you still got a view of the summer sky- the Shins" in chalk on a brick wall out side, and watching people walk by and say "what the hell is that?", and then read it in almost perfect unison. Eventually someone got wise, and realized the two girls, that were watching every one take a long time reading it were the culprits, and even ventured to tell us, "not if its cloudy", which it was. When Lacey's mom did come to pick us up, to scoop up our bored, tired (from walking) bodies, and take us into Portland, we had more to do in the center. So back inside we went, looking for "summer pajamas" and food. After doing so, and I myself eating nothing but a smoothie, with globs of blue/brown, unflavored, tapioca that you had to swallow to get out of your mouth (I found a way around that, spit it out!) we were out of there! Or so we thought. Back in front of the car, escape in sight, we found ourselves asking, where are the keys? After a Chat with a friendly security guard, back inside to look for keys. We retraced our steps, exactly. Even the long way around the store that we had taken when we got lost. Then Lacey and I had the bright idea to look in the lost and found, sure enough, there they were, and after a long walk back to the car, we were out of there. After driving around for about a half an hour, not sure where we were, we found ourselves in down town Portland. We looked around for a bit, for the smallest park in the world (Mill Ends Park) but without luck, its small, but big enough to find, I would imagine. After that failed, we went to Pioneer square to see the sand castle building contest. that was nice, except having to go thought a little too fast, so I could only snap a few pictures. We left as soon as we came, and soon started walking in what Lacey's mom thought was the right way. (that makes me sound mean, no one really knew where we were going) We ended up making a very big loop, and got a lot of walking done, but not in the right direction. After looking at a map, we hopped the Max, and rode it a few blocks. When we got off, we knew where we were, I could see Powells. So into Powells we went. Only spending a few minuets, I got a zine, debated whether to get Thurstan Moore's Mix Tape Book (I didn't get it), and looked at some art! We farted around in some strores here and there, never buying, and walked up and down Burnside. Then into Whole Foods for dinner, and back to the car. The Drive back down was lovely, driving around sunset, eating our traditional Whole Foods meal, and listening to the Magnetic Fields, Charm of the highway strip, excellent driving music! One of my favorite, who am I kidding, my favorite thing to do, is just sitting in a car (preferably at night, but anything else is fine too) listening to some good tunes.