Then again, skiing would have forced us to get up early at nearby Sakura Ridge Farm and Lodge, nestled in 45 acres of pear and cherry trees. Sleeping in, waking to a picture-postcard view of snowcapped Mount Hood, and savoring a homemade breakfast of salmon quiche and banana walnut bread was worth every luxurious minute.
Within an hour's drive of Portland are every sport and activity imaginable, from skiing and mountain climbing to wine tasting and antiquing. The town of Hood River is a magnet for windsurfers.
Choosing leisure over extreme, we head straight from the airport southwest to the Willamette (pronounced Will-AM-it, "dammit," the locals say) wine country. Within a half-hour, we're lunching on Thai beef and chicken at Vineyard Grill in quaint but worn Newberg, and considering wine-tasting rooms such as Hip Chicks Do Wine and Dark Horse.
At Duck Pond Cellars, we pick up a detailed map of wineries and tasting rooms, buy mini wall grilles to decorate our home, and get tips about five wine samples - a pinot noir, pinot gris, chardonnay, syrah, and gewürztraminer. Neither of us is a wine connoisseur. I approach wine the same way I played baseball - see the ball, hit the ball. All of the wines are pleasant, and the tasting is free - the only complimentary samples we would come across, while the others apply the $5 to $15 per-person fee to a purchase.
Head for the hills
Resisting the lure of other tasting rooms along Route 99W, we head to a cluster of vineyards covering the rolling Red Hills of Dundee. At Archery Summit, the 16-acre vineyard surrounds a tasting room that melds Oregon and Burgundy styles - appropriate since both wine-producing regions sit on the same latitude. Beneath the tasting room, five caves hold more than 600 French oak barrels of pinot noir for aging.
