Ocean Shores to Portland should only take 3 hours.  That is if you don't stop along the way, or get side tracked or re-routed because of a crash on the I-5.  All of the above happened to us on the drive today.
First stop was in Aberdeen, the home of Kurt Cobain.  Who knew that Ed was a fan?  We heard that there was a statue of him in the Aberdeen Museum.

The museum was worth a stop even without the tribute to Kurt. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg

They have a very good collection of memorabilia from early days in Aberdeen. 

 http://www.aberdeen-museum.org/exhibits.htm

It was now time for our mid-morning coffee & muffin and with the temperature now in the high 20's, we found an air conditioned Starbucks.  The first one we have seen since arriving in Washington! 

After a refreshing break, back on the road.  Thank goodness for A/C.  Most of our road trips take Ed and I down the same road - Memory Lane - we spend a lot of time reminiscing about the holiday car trips we took with Natalie and Emily.  The trip we took to the Oregon coast and Portland in 1990 comes to mind.  A 1981 Toyota and no air conditioning (and no laptop or Blog).  

Our route to Portland was along Highway 12 connecting with the I-5 and then on to Portland. We arrived at the ramp to the highway only to find that it had been blocked off. We could see the traffic backed up along the freeway and nothing was moving.   A logging truck overturned on the freeway and spilled its load. The southbound freeway was blocked for a couple of hours. Fortunately there were no fatalities. We kept driving along Hwy 12 east and soon came to a convenience store.  There was a table, a bench and shade in the front and thought that this would be a good time to have our lunch, and to see if could wait out the delay. The friendly attendant gave us directions to an alternate route and after our rest stop we were back on our way.

We arrived safely in Portland and our hotel the Hyatt Place at 3pm.    Temperature 34C!  

We stayed at this hotel on our last visit to Portland in 2012 and were looking forward to staying in the spacious room that awaited us.

After a short rest, we were soon on our way into town aboard the MAX light rail line.  We were happy to ride in air conditioned comfort and not deal with the rush hour traffic.

Dinner tonight was at Mama Mia's Trattoria.  Penne pasta and a local ale for Ed and I had a glass of Chianti and the cioppino.  Delicious food and great service.  We would recommend this restaurant to anyone looking for Italian food - and they can do GF.

After dinner we took a stroll through Macey's.  We we came out of the department store we were drawn up the street by the sound of music.  We came to Pioneer Courthouse square and the Oregon Crusaders giving a free performance as a preview to their summer tour.  A Drum and Bugle corp made up of 200 students.  It was quite a performance.

We took the train back to our hotel.  The stop for our hotel is Cascade Station and it is directly across from Cascade Station Shopping Centre, home to Starbucks, Banana Republic Factory Store, Ikea and YoCream frozen yogurt.  A cool, sweet treat to end a very warm day in Portland.