Bottle Rocket

 

Bottle Rocket is a popular food cart located at Hawthorne Food Cart in East Portland. It serves mainly burgers with unique side and also serves homemade lemonade and various kind of beers that are brewed locally. Hawthorne Food Cart has been a popular food cart location for people in Portland and Bottle Rocket is one of the most popular choice there.

We went to Hawthorne Food Cart on Sunday to catch up with friends visiting from California. They have heard of the food cart culture in Portland and thus wanted to try as many food cart as possible. We chose Hawthorne Food Cart since it is closer and also offers good food cart experience.

Bottle Rocket is located on the East side of Hawthorne Food Cart area and the food menu includes hamburger, cheese burger, and bacon cheese burger. The sides includes various vegetable choices. People can choose to make a meal that includes the burger, a size, and a cup of homemade lemonade.

We ordered a Bacon Cheese Burger meal with Tempura Cauliflower as the side. After we placed the order, we also realized that we can choose to have bigger, or smaller burger. We chose the bigger one of course.

The burger is being cooked after the order is placed, but it was served quite fast within 10 minutes. The burger came with a large thick beef petty, which was quite juicy. There were also lettuce, onion, and pickled vegetables in the burger which provide amazing taste. A small portion of barbecue sauce was also give on the side if we wish to add more sauce in the burger.

The side was served in a Chinese takeout paper box. We were not expecting that. We chose the Tempura Cauliflower, but it was more like fried mixed vegetable. On top of cauliflower, there were also onion and jalapeno in there. There was a limited amount of cauliflower served in the box, which was a bit disappointing.

The homemade lemonade was not bad and quite refreshing.

Overall, Bottle Rocket serves great burger that's juicy and full of flavors. However, the side we chose did not meet our expectation and we would definitely try a different side next time. In addition, our friends ordered the beer from there and they loved it.

South Sisters Summit 2020

 

South Sisters Summit trail is one of the most popular hiking trail at Central Oregon. South Sisters is the third tallest mountain in Oregon and there is a way to head to the top of the mountain. Every summer, thousands of hiking enthusiasts come here to do camping, day hikes, and night hikes. This hiking trail is especially crowded during the weekend. The hiking trail is about 40 minutes West from Bend and about 4 hours away from Portland. The trail is about 6 miles 1 way starting from Devil's Lake and the elevation gain is nearly 5000ft.

During the Labour Day long weekend, we decided to take Friday off and do a night hike on Thursday night since the weather is warm with low wind. We left Portland right after work and got to the trail head by 11PM. We decided to rest a bit after a long drive, thus we started the hike at 12:30AM.

When we started hiking in the first section of the trail in the forest, it was so warm and humid. We took off our jacket and outer layer to cool off. The night had a full moon in the clear sky, we barely needed to have our head lamp. The full moon was almost bright enough for us to see the trail ahead.

As we make our progress on the trail, we heard some tree branch dropping sound on the side of trail. We were alerted by this and used flash light to look around. We did not see any movement however, but suspected that there were animals around us. We stayed quite cautious as we proceeded further but did not see anything.

As we headed out of the forest, we saw a pair of shining eyes right in front of us about 15 feet away. The pair of eyes disappeared very quickly but we could clearly see our head lamp light reflecting off the eyes. We were being very careful and worried if it could be some vicious animal. For the next 10 minutes of hike, we maintained alerted status to ensure no surprises could jump at us.

After we crossed the plan and got to the rocky area, we ran into a man sleeping in a sleeping bag right on the side of the trail. Apparently we woke him up and he said he was just taking a rest. The rocky section was tiring to hike on because we had to pay close attention to where the trail was so that we would not get lost. By the time we got to Tear Drop Lake, it was around 4:30. We were hiking quite slowly compared to before.

We took a 30 minutes reset and started to make final ascend. The final part of the trail is the most difficult part. It was sandy and sipper, and the incline angle is like 60 degree. It would have been better with hiking poles but we did not carry any. It took us nearly 2 hours to complete the last part to get to the summit, but it was totally worth it.

The summit was windy but beautiful. We crossed the snow field to climb to the summit and we could see North Sister and Middle Sister. The sun rise was beautiful. It made the whole hike worth it.

Overall, this was a great hike. We do it almost every year as we enjoy this outdoor area very much. We highly recommend this hike but do prepare to carry enough water to stay hydrated.