PLEASE, for the love of Jehovah, if you are going to play in the water, BE CAREFUL! Every summer I hear the same things over and over and over about people drowning on the waterways in this area. High Rocks seems to be the biggest culprit.
BE SAFE! I would be heartbroken if the kids from any of our members here drowned.
Dude, Vancouver existed before Portland did. Hello? Fort Vancouver? Founded in 1830-something? It was a Military post before it was a city.
I'll grant you that Mill Plain can be ungodly, but it depends on the time of day. Rush hour....ugh, yeah, it can be pretty bad.
Fourth Plain...eh, it depends on where you go. NE Fourth Plain, west of Andresen, is pretty spotty. There's a few places on Fourth Plain that are pretty poor and have the highest crime rate. From Andresen west to I-5, that whole area is not a place I'd want to be alone in on foot at night.
The biggest problem with Fourth Plain are the people who use it during rush hour to try and avoid SR-500, because they don't want to sit through the lights on SR-500. During rush hour, it can be utter hell traveling on SR-500 with those goddamn traffic lights. But SR-500 can handle the traffic, but not the middle of the city during rush hour, which is why Fourth Plain clogs up so much down around Falk Road (I used to live in The Glenn townhouses down there when we first moved here).
Fourth Plain is more sparse traffic-wise once you get past I-205. and up towards 503.