Portland & Carbon Leaf!

We started our trip to the Pacific Northwest in Portland, spending a couple of days with Dave's cousin Katie. Katie was able to get a couple of days off of work, which was fantastic, and we spent one day touring around downtown Portland.


Here is Katie at Portland State University, the school that she had just graduated from the week before. Yeah Katie! Finishing that college degree is a BIG step! She showed us around the main part of the campus where there was a farmer's market taking place, it was pretty neat.
One of the things I love about Portland, or visiting most places for that matter, is the houses. Anchorage is such a young city that you don't see houses from the beginning of the 20th century. And the few (I can think of one actually) that exist are not grand, big, houses. This house is just an example of one of the houses in NW Portland that I snapped a picture of. Beautiful!
Here are Katie and Dave awaiting the start of our evening entertainment. On June 20th we went to see one of our favorite bands, Carbon Leaf!! Katie was new to Carbon Leaf, so she didn't know what to expect. The concert was in SE Portland at the Aladdin Theater. Carbon Leaf is a band from Virginia, and they don't make it to the west coast often. They have a new album that came out in May, Nothing Rhymes With Woman, and so they are on tour promoting this new album. We checked the tour dates and were excited to see that they were going to be in Portland while we were in the area, Dave and I knew it was a sign and that we needed to go!
Here's the band performing. I actually filmed a little of the show, but don't feel right about posting a bootleg video, so just a still photo. It was an AWESOME show! It was one of the best shows I've seen! They played all the songs I love and they played more and more. It was just the best!! Great music!!
After the show all the band members came out to meet the crowd. Here I am with the lead singer Barry! All the band members signed my poster! I tried to convince all of them that they need to come to Anchorage and they were interested. A few of the band members like fishing, I think I've found my hook - excuse the bad pun! They are a really nice group of guys, I'm really impressed that they stayed to talk to the crowd and were willing to get photos and sign stuff. I'm going to work on encouraging them to come to Alaska because I'd LOVE to see them in concert again!! This was the best start to our vacation!!