Glowing Greens Blacklight Miniature Golf

 Having done the mental trap, we decided to take a lesser challenge on by returning to play miniature golf.

 Blacklights can make everything look more eerie anyway, and Glowing Greens capitalizes on this by using an alien monster theme, and giving you balls and pencils that glow themselves.

 Hole names are fun, though not always clearly relevant to the layout of the hole.

There are some pretty impressive murals, but also lots of barrels of the kind in which you store toxic waste.

 There are also plenty of space monsters. Sometimes they will suddenly make movements and noises while you are trying to line up your putt, but these guys didn't.. At least, not to us.

 Larry was another story.

One note for more serious golfers -- they do not have specific tee locations marked. That can make you nervous, or it can allow you to plan your shot better and perhaps have a better game.

That doesn't describe us, as we are not good at golf. We still had a good time.

(ETA - pictures were not coming out without the flash, so these are the pictures I took after giving up on getting good eerie pictures.)

https://glowinggreens.com/

PDX Dining - Shigezo

I met up at Shigezo with a group of former co-workers.

They do have regular tables that have a booth feel, but because there were so many of us, we got a room, with doors that slid close and gave us some privacy. Entering the room meant going up a step and removing our shoes.

For a moment it looked like we would be sitting on the floor, but there is actually leg room, and a reasonable amount of leg room. However, you are positioning yourself into a movable seat that is at the same level as your feet, which does take some finesse.

Still, while getting up and down was tricky, once seated it was comfortable and did not require constant adjusting, the way actually sitting on the floor would have.

The closed off room has the potential to get stuffy, but they take care of that.

Although it had been described as a ramen restaurant - and they have many noodle dishes available - the specialty seems to be the sushi, which is beautifully presented.

That being said, it may have more pleasing options available for people who don't want to eat sushi than the average restaurant that will bring you beautifully arranged sushi.

They also have the most high-tech toilets that I have ever seen. I admit to some regret now for not having tried them out, but I was so startled to sit down on a warm seat that I was a little scared to start it vibrating or washing.

Our staff was really good, especially patient in explaining the dishes and drinks. Drinking members of the party really enjoyed their options, especially a cocktail that was something like a mojito but more Japanese (they were still trying to come up with the right name for it).

 It was a fun experience and the food was good. I think, though, that the most impressive thing is that with most members of the party having two or three dishes and two drinks, the average ended up being about $30 a person including tip (the gratuity is included in the bill, so keep an eye out for that when making calculations). For the experience that seems very reasonable.


https://www.shigezo-pdx.com/

Mental Trap at Glowing Greens

No recording devices are allowed inside the escape room, so enjoy one exterior shot.

Formerly a Grocery Outlet in the heart of Beaverton, Glowing Greens is now a place where you can play a round of mini-golf, experience a haunted house (at the right time of year), or enter an escape room.

This is about the escape room. You are probably allowed to photograph your golf game.

The no photo policy makes sense. The right photos could spoil the fun for a later party (while also helping them solve it quickly), and although I am not certain, I suspect that the haunted house activities share the space. Certainly some of the props would fit right in.

I have been curious about doing an escape room since I first heard about them, and that interest deepened when they showed one on an episode of The Big Bang Theory. I was a little shocked at the price - $30 per person.

I have to acknowledge that is not unreasonable to charge. They set up the space for you, and you are constantly being watched, not only so you can ask for hints (which you can) but also if you seem to be struggling pointlessly in the wrong direction, a voice may come over the walkie talkie with a suggestion.

It may still be reasonable to question whether the price of the entertainment is worthwhile, because that $30 essentially gives you one hour, whereas a similarly priced concert ticket or dinner purchase could give you two or more hours. I think some of the attraction is that instead of being passively entertained, you are challenging yourself, and testing yourself.

We took a really hard test.

I have not done any other escape rooms, so I can only compare it to what I have seen on television, without really knowing how realistic that was. I do have some thoughts.

Mental Trap has a good amount of space and they make good use of it. That can be a disadvantage too, as it is easy to head off in the wrong direction. In their case, access to various areas was sequential. We wasted time trying one code that it wasn't time for yet, but that was largely because we missed what we should have been working on, behind a dark door. That's when being monitored comes in helpful.

It is possible to take things too literally. Being advised to leave props on their sets made me reluctant to take a slip of paper and pencil with us, though that was clearly the purpose. They said to stick together because teamwork will win the day. That teamwork may sometimes mean someone standing in one room reading something to you. So don't go wandering off in separate directions, but you do not need to stay in a tight cluster.

(In TBBT, at one point a chained zombie burst out from a door, so I was looking around a lot for something like that, and it was not necessary in this case.)

We did not pass the test.

Being in weird circumstances can heighten your sense or make you kind of time. We wasted a lot of time because the person trying the combination locks forgot how they worked (passing 0 and going around twice, those normal things) and we did not know that was happening. Communication, but not communication that we realized we needed.

My primary criticism - and this isn't necessarily bad - is that the puzzles leaned heavily toward the numerical. I don't mind one numerical puzzle, and they were not all the same kind of numerical puzzle, but something that focused more on spatial relations or knowledge of trivia would have played to my strengths more.

(That being said, there were some pretty good pop culture references.)

I stand by my praise of the use of space and the set decoration, but the best thing may have been that the staff was really great. They were helpful without being condescending (which we would have deserved) and after we ran out of time they assured us that this was their hardest puzzle (possibly true) and that we probably would have gotten it with a few more minutes (probably not true, because they showed us and yes, we were getting close to getting the right number, but the sequence after that looked like it would have taken us a while).

I think it could be easy to decide that an escape room is an experience you need to have once, and that's enough, but after having seen a few of the pitfalls and maybe being better at getting around them now, there is a part of me that wants to try again.

https://www.mentaltrap.com/

Portland - Wells Fargo History Museum

Many of the places we go were either learned about because of a field trip, or are research for future field trips; that has been the perk of having a kindergarten teacher/summer camp coordinator in the family. Often the kids get to do more things (like pretend pan for gold or get story time), so it is great when you have a good self-guided tour.

The Wells Fargo History Museum is more than just a coach,

though I do think that the way they have it set up to take your picture with the coach is kind of ingenious.

There is more to their history than banking.

So the recreation of an early bank - with check canceling and an adding machine you can try - is part of the exhibit, and there is banking history,  but after that there is information on security, ...

and different modes of transportation, ....

plus the kind of things you might ship.

There is even information on early forensics.

Much of the need for banking in the West was related to mining, so there are displays on that.

As well as a look at the history of the Chinese and how the banks served Chinatown.

There is even a tutorial you can take on driving a six-horse coach, which was very informative. (No, the box doesn't move, but there's video.)

The Wells Fargo History Museum fills a fairly small space, but there is a lot inside.

https://www.wellsfargohistory.com/museums/portland/