Hoffman Farm

 

Hoffman Farm is a popular U-Pick farm near Portland.  It is located at South Beaverton and less than 30 minutes away from Portland.  It gets extremely busy during the berry picking season due to the farm being close to the large city and also offers large variety of berries for people to pick.  It also has a large playground for kids to enjoy as well.

We got to Hoffman Farm around 9:30AM in the morning and there were already a lot of people.  Most people here are mostly looking for blueberry and strawberries.  When we got to the entrance, we could choose to use a bucket or use cardboard box.  Since we have small kid with us, we chose the bucket as it was easier to carry with.

Hoffman Farm also offered train ride to go around the farm.  The train ticket was $5 per person and it could take you all the way to the backside of the farm and people could get back on to the train after done picking the berries.

As we walked through the farm, the blueberries were the ones we encountered.  There were rows and rows of blueberries and most were ripe.  As we continued down the path, we also saw raspberry and blackberry.  There were also marionberries.  The strawberries were all the way at the back and that was where most people were.

There were rows and rows of strawberries at the farm and there were plenty of space of large amount of people to share.  It was more work to pick strawberries since we had to bend down to pick them.  The strawberries were quite sweet.  Some strawberries were quite large too.  We just had to have patience to look for the big juicy ones.

As we finished picking the berries, we headed back to the store to weight our berries.  The cost of the berry is only $2.50 per pound.  It was quite cheap and there was no entrance fee collected.  We were thinking that people could just come in and take a walk around the farm.  We were hoping to see some baked goods at the farm store but did not find anything interesting.

Overall, it was a great experience at Hoffman Farm.  The fact that it was so close to the city just made it so convenient for people to visit.  We definitely would visit Hoffman Farm again to pick up more fresh berries.

Two Hands Fresh Corn Dogs

 

Two Hands Fresh Corn Dogs is a restaurant specialized in corn dogs.  The corn dogs offered here is Korean styled corn dogs that different from the original American corn dogs.  The Korean styled corn dogs adds different sauce and crispiness to it.  The Two Hands Fresh Corn Dogs at Hillsboro was going to close down permanently and thus we wanted to try it out or else we won't have any opportunity in the future.

We got to Two Hands Fresh Corn Dogs at 4:30PM on its closing day.  When we got there and realized that the restaurant would close at 5PM on its last day.  We were lucky to get here early.  We ordered a Crispy Rice Corn Dog and a Dirty Fries.  When we ordered the corn dog, we could choose different fillings such as all beef hotdog, half hotdog and half cheese, plant based hot dog, or all cheese.

The food did not take long to be ready.  Both the corn dog and the fries were placed in nice little cardboard boxes.  First, the corn dog was really crispy with the rice around it.  It had honey mustard and ketchup drizzled on the top.  Then it had sugar coating around it, which made it sweet taste.  The corn flour coating around it was not very thick and also tasted sweet.  The Dirty Fries was essentially fried tots.  Then there were other seasonings placed on top of it which made it a little spicy and sweet.

The food at Two Hands Fresh Corn Dogs were mediocre and we found it to be a bit too sweet.  For people who enjoys heavy taste would definitely like these corn dogs.  But if you are more into tasting the natural flavour of the food, then it is not the right kind of food.  We were still glad to have tried this on its very last day!

Cannon Beach 2026

 

Cannon Beach is popular sandy beach near Portland, Oregon.  It is about an hour West of Portland and it is a small charming town with beautiful sandy beach.  It is famous for its Haystack rock standing in the ocean.  Many Oregonian visit Cannon Beach during the weekend to relax and enjoy the sunshine on the beach.  People also often set up bonfires along the beach at night to get some smores.

We took the Friday off and headed to Cannon Beach for a nice 2 night stay there.  We have never stayed at Cannon Beach previously since it was so closed to Portland.  There were many options to stay overnight but we chose Hallmark Resort and SPA since it is close to the Haystack Rock.

We got to Cannon Beach around 3PM in the afternoon.  Unfortunately it was quite windy and raining a little bit in the sky.  So we didn't spend as much time as we would have liked on the beach.  Instead, we visited the stores in the village to checkout new stuff there.  It was great to get out of the city life and have a stroll in the village to relax.

The weather on the second day was much better.  It was still cloudy but the sun has came out.  We went down to the beach around the sunset golden hour.  It was still windy and many people were flying kite up high in the sky.  The setting sun behind the Haystack Rock was beautiful.  We also flew the drone up in the sky to see the ocean waves from the above.  It was definitely a different perspective on viewing the ocean.

We were unable to take some Milkyway photos due to the cloudy sky at night unfortunately.  But we would definitely come back and visit again to do that!