Does your favorite summer moment happen at the end of a cape hike (be it Lookout, Kiwanda, Perpetua, Sebastian ...), when you can look back at the shoreline, waves gently petting a strand of beach? Or is it at a picnic dinner on the Bluffs before the sun drops behind Forest Park, when we’re thankful to be on the western edge of the time zone to enjoy these extra moments in the evening instead of the morning? 

For travel and outdoors editor Sam Stites, it may be an after-work nine at Colwood Golf Course, softball at Normandale Park, or a beer on the banks of the Sandy or Clackamas River. Food critic Karen Brooks opts for the beach at Manzanita and any place on her annual quest for the best marionberry pie. Katherine Chew Hamilton, our food editor, says summer equals Sugarpine, the Troutdale drive-in restaurant where you can grab soft-serve ice cream (check out its pastry chef's killer tres leches recipe here). It’s also camping at Lost Lake, trekking along Eagle Creek in the Gorge with mid-hike dips in the water, picking berries on Sauvie Island, and visiting her “secret swimming hole,” which she (wisely) will not divulge.

Art director Mike Novak is a fan of Sugarpine, too, where he can dig into a gigantic sundae after a hike to Angel’s Rest. He’s also partial to a chair on his front porch, where he can sit with a cocktail; the sidewalk in front of Los Puñales, with a plate of tacos in front of him; a waterfront seat in Hood River with barbecue from the Grasslands cart; and Laurelhurst Park, which he might bike through on his way to get a steelhead sandwich at Flying Fish Co. (Yes, Mike is an art director and not a food critic, though he may have missed his calling.)

A running theme, aside from Mike being hungry, is the outdoors, and grabbing those dry days and elusive sunbeams while we can (and we have plenty of other ideas on how to do this in our Summer Guide). I’m an oddball with my ultimate summer setting: a dark, dank room just off I-5 that smells of pizza and popcorn. It’s the Jolly Roger Inn at the Enchanted Forest, and the home of what a hanging sign declares to be the Free Water Show. Repeating every 15 minutes, the show combines the Bellagio in Vegas, the spirit of Sid and Marty Krofft, 359 water jets, rainbow spotlights, and “music and choreography” by the daughter of the amusement park’s founder. Warning: you may feel a sudden urge to write a novel just so you can set the last scene there. 

Whatever place says summer to you, or wherever you want to set the last scene of a novel—why not Sugarpine, or a berry field, or a secret swimming hole, or Mike’s porch?—I hope you’re finding your way there right now. 

MARGARET SEILER
Managing editor