The Best Places Portland Monthly’s Travel Editor Visited in 2024
Among 2024’s most stunning sights: a snow-covered Crater Lake.
Last December, I came back to Portland Monthly after four and a half years away from the magazine. The reasons why were many, but atop the list was a desire to return to work that dealt directly with the place I call home. And, after years of writing about the arts—along with bikes, woo, and people doing weird things on the internet—I’d now get to steer travel and outdoors coverage, which meant expanding my gaze beyond the city in ways I hadn’t before. (It also heralded more hours under open skies and fewer in darkened theaters, though I still sometimes pop into the latter.)
It’s perhaps trite to be grateful at the end of a year, but also it’s true. As the calendar closes, I feel deepened appreciation for Oregon, and for the fact that places exist beyond it. Here are five of my travel highlights from 2024.
Best Snow: Crater Lake
I’d seen photos of a snow-covered Crater Lake. But the real thing? Astounding, especially on a day with a sky so blue you don’t trust your eyes. In November, after one of the season’s first dumps of powder, I snowshoed from park headquarters up to the rim with a small group (we were on a press trip at the invitation of Discover Klamath). When we topped out to the view of the country’s deepest lake, we unleashed a chorus of whoops and wows and oh my gods—and then proceeded to take our own photos that would fail to capture the splendor.
I didn’t manage to photograph any lazuli buntings (birds are small!) at Cottonwood Canyon State Park, just basalt cliffs and sagebrush.
Best Birds: Cottonwood Canyon State Park
Though I’ve been paying more attention to birds since the pandemic, 2024 was the year I finally learned some proper identification skills. During spring migration, I paid a visit to Cottonwood Canyon State Park, a stunner of a spot along the John Day River where I knew lazuli buntings—songbirds topped with brilliant turquoise feathers—might be present. Merlin, the app that identifies birds by sound, told me they were. I spotted one, and then another, and felt, I’ll admit, pretty darn pleased with myself.
The 40-mile Timberline Trail delivers view after view of Mount Hood.
Best Walk in the Woods: Timberline Trail
In 2023, I circled Mount Rainier on the Wonderland Trail. This year, the Timberline Trail led me on a spin around Mount Hood. As my friend and I sloshed through thigh-deep rivers milky with glacial silt and navigated stretches of trail that were like obstacle courses, ducking under and climbing over downed trees, I felt new respect for our home volcano.
Who needs oceans when Idaho’s rivers deliver beaches like this?
Best Beaches: Main Salmon River
My 2024 splurge was a six-day rafting trip on the main fork of Idaho’s Salmon River, where I paddled through spectacular canyons, smashed big waves, and wished I could go back in time and spend my 20s as a river guide. The Salmon is the longest undammed river in the Lower 48, and this natural flow helps build broad bands of fine white sand on the banks, tailor-made for dreamy, end-of-day lounge sessions. There are many excellent arguments for removing dams (I see you, fish). Reviving sandy beaches should be among them.
It’s tiki time in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Best Tiki Bar: Max’s South Seas Hideaway
I did, occasionally, go inside in 2024. Among the most incredible interiors I experienced was this two-story, decked-the-heck-out tiki bar in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sitting under a thatched roof, sipping a perfectly balanced Painkiller, ogling the Technicolor inhabitants of the 500-gallon saltwater fish tank, it was the closest I got this year to a tropical getaway.
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