Legend has it that close to the end of the Oregon Trail pioneers were forced to choose between north to Oregon and south to California. The fork they reached had two hand-painted signs - one scrawled with a crudely drawn gold nugget and a pick-axe. The other lettered sign said "Oregon". It is said that only those who could read headed north.
A state intently concerned with its conservation, a century and a half later Oregon is still quietly happy to let the gold-hunting hordes career down south. In our case it was a roughly printed picture of a sneering Elvis that made the fork in the road choice in a millisecond.
"Come for the Cookies, Stay for the Elvis'", the signs happily ranted of the world's first 24-hour coin-operated theological automat - scene for weddings, confessions and sermons. This enticing institution promised delights such as marriage, divorce and sainthood, all available from ATM-type machines. For a quarter, at any hour of the day or night, Elvis disciples could be married or attain instant forgiveness.
The first warning sign about the Church of Elvis should really have been the fact that it was closed, in a manner somewhat contradictory to 24-hour church operations. We sought solace (martinis) in a converted milk factory where scary women made bird noises on bass guitars.
Oregon is brimming with microbreweries and wineries. After researching several local brews it was perhaps just as well that Elvis was not open for business or all sorts of bargain beatifications might have taken place for under a dollar.
Continuing our research into the liquid produce of Greater Portland, the plan was to saunter out the next morning to Oregon's little known Candy Basket Chocolate Factory and guzzle Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-style from their fantastic 21-foot melted chocolate waterfall. However, it was not to be - the waterfall was dry. We never discovered whether a gluttonous oompa loompa had inadvertently cascaded in or overly enthusiastic visitors had imbibed the entire thing. Whatever the reason, they were in the process of re-melting and this takes a week.
We again struggled into our sequinned grandeur and tripped happily down to the infamous Church of Elvis, cunningly screeching to a halt on the way to phone their "call for reassurance" number. The High Priestess on the other end sounded far from reassuring, careering wildly somewhere between terrifyingly hungover and plain terrifying. However we persevered.
The Church of Elvis. We were actually there, frozen with glee between a life-size cut-out of Hugh Grant and a painting of President Bush. Signs declaring "I brake for fruit pies" and the like adorned every surface, tack peeled off every wall between guilt-inducing "You Must Buy" signs, though alas, no longer any coin-operated marriage dispensers. Admission is free, but as the signs informed us, "We're a church and we operate on guilt, so if you make a donation or buy something, you'll feel a lot better."
Out strode the High Priestess, viewing us suspiciously through narrowed eyes and green sequinned glasses. She snarled "What do you want?" We quaked.
We had hardly managed to squeak whether we were there to confess, purge ourselves through severe retail penance or get married before she had snatched up her wand, slammed on some background elevator Elvis and thrown on a bedraggled (possibly authentic) studded white fur cape. We stood fearfully in front of a cardboard Elvis a la Love Me Tender, Hawaiian-esque King classics filling the air, slot machine art on every side. She raised her wand. The phone rang.
Eek, we said to each other, once temporarily abandoned and glad of the respite, she's a touch intimidating to confess anything substantial to.
She rampaged back in again, shouting "Get out, get out, the church is now closed" and propelled us forcibly down the stairs, without even so much as the opportunity to buy an Elvis apron or insert our ready quarters into the Vend-o-matic Mystery Machine with its whirling dolls' heads.
Two small cards fluttered down after us. We scooped them up and read on apprehensively to discover that they proclaimed us now to be saints in the Church of Elvis. They further instructed us that as bearers of this Elvis I.D. card, we might actually be Elvis, and good treatment of us could save the card reader's life.
We fled, rather pleased to have escaped. And really, when you think about it, being a saint is most likely to be vastly more useful than an apron of smiling burger-fattened Elvis or a nodding King for the road.
AFTER the trauma of the High Priestess's decomposition into the Wicked Witch of the West Coast we continued our research into Oregon's liquid specialities. We shrugged off tall caffeine and cow-free combinations in some of the Pacific Northwest's endemic Starbucks coffee outlets and crossed the Willamette River which divides the city into east and west. In the alternative Hawthorne District there were used bookstores, offbeat boutiques and yet more local microbreweries' wares to sample in the company of keenly facial-haired boys who table-drummed to Meatpuppets album tracks in scruffy plaid.
Portland is an easy-going, safe city with friendly, welcoming inhabitants, the odd Elvis fanatic excepted. It is consistently voted near the top of `most liveable cities in the US' list. Within lurching distance of a flurry of largely untouched natural delights, it is an incomparable launching point for seeing the dramatic Columbia River Gorge and Mount Hood, for discovering Oregon's state legislature-preserved coast or the cowboy country of the high desert of the east.
We scarpered and spent the train trip north debating what we would be patron saints of and got to Seattle where the glow of the Space Needle and a succession of Elvis karaoke tracks from the bar next door kept us awake till the fog wrapped the city up till dawn.