RFF received an incredible gift today when a new member of RFF (who wishes to remain anonymous) volunteered to both check out the Portland race vicinity and share what he found with us all.
Here is his story-- We are only removing the names of the two hotels and their pictures for right now, for the same reason that we are not yet going to reveal the finale location. We will post all of this info once the race filming is definitely completed, so you may want to keep checking back here for updates!
Reference Map:
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I am a huge fan of "The Amazing Race" but only a casual and infrequent
reader of TAR sites and forums, so it was largely by luck that I
happened across this RFF thread: things were incredibly slow at work
today, so I killed some time surfing the Internet. When I saw there
was a lot of news coming out about the fall network schedules, my mind
turned to TAR, and I started searching for TAR 13 news. When that
searching eventually led me to the news here (still unconfirmed
earlier this afternoon) that TAR was apparently in Portland, I decided
to do a recce to the cited location, O'Bryant Square, and its vicinity
as soon as my work day ended.
What I discovered:
(Pictures are thumbnails--click-click!)1. WRP VANS ON THE STREET. There are 9 to 10 very large white Ford
vans (all with Enterprise Rent-A-Car insignia) parked along Stark
Street on the block east of O'Bryant Square. All of the City of
Portland parking signs along this block have been modified to indicate
the spaces are reserved for WRP Production (sic).
2. MINIVANS IN A PARKING LOT. Just north and west of the fleet of
large vans is a pay-to-park parking lot, which was "roped off" with
yellow tape; signs said "Lot Reserved" and "Lot Closed." Parked in
this lot were approximately eight smaller vehicles (I'm not good with
cars but I think they're Dodge minivans -- much closer to the kind of
vehicle that the racers have used over the years, and quite unlike the
much large white For vans). The minivans were in various colors, and
there were three or four other vehicles. I understand other pictures
exist of this parking lot; the one picture I took is from a less than
ideal angle because the lot always had at least one person walking
around it, making it difficult to get a picture without attracting
attention; this picture shows one of those Dodge minivans from behind.
On one walkby, I noticed in the windshield of one of the minivans an
8.5-by-11 piece of white paper onto which was printed "BAG #2" in
large letters, but that sign was gone when I walked by later.
Peach: We know from TwoP Mars' post that:
I went back to the lot after work and every car that had been there (including the Xterra) was gone, except for the minivans. And they all had white sheets of paper on the dash that said things like "BAG #2" and "FULL 
" (I couldn't read any of them in their entirety except "BAG #2," because of the lady guarding the lot. This time it was a different lady, who was standing outside of the vans talking on a phone. She was making sure I didn't get too close, though, so I didn't snap any photos of the new dashboards signs.
[/i]
3. MOVEMENT OF PERSONNEL BETWEEN THE TWO VEHICLE AREAS AND TWO HOTELS.
There was some but not a great deal of activitiy around the large
white vans. During my strolls up and down that block and the adjoining
blocks, I occasionally saw various young men and women -- none of whom
looked like or had the aura of racers -- do unexciting things such as
talking on a cell phone while standing next to a white van with the
passenger-side front door open. There was a period of maybe 7 minutes
when about 5 of these people were all together on a street corner,
chatting, but I could not make out any of what they said. Most of the
time, though, the vans just sat there, parked, with no activity.
I observed a red-haired young woman and a young man walk from one of
the white vans to the Hotel {name temporarily deleted} a very short distance away
on Broadway. I believe -- and I will be very eager to hear if this can
be confirmed -- this same red-haired woman appears on one of the
supplemental "Phil's Diary" videos on cbs.com for a past TAR season;
unfortunately, I have no recall of what season that might have been,
but I think the context was that she's a production assistant of some
kind and in the video Phil asks her to show her notebook/binder in
which she keeps track of the results of the challenges. My memory
might well be letting me down; in any case, she did definitely get
something out of or put something into one of the vans, and she and
her male companion then entered the hotel, outside of which was a
doorman holding a clipboard: I learned the doorman was checking
guests' names a little while later, when I managed to linger just long
enough to eavesdrop on the arrival of a guest who apparently was just
a regular guest, not TAR-related. (I am not familiar with that hotel
so I don't know if a doorman checking names off a clipboard is a
normal or extraordinary.) Because I figured the red-haired lady is
important, I tried to take a picture of her as she walked from the van
to the hotel, but I failed; the picture that I did get of her was from
approximately an hour later, when I happened to be walking up the other
side of the street (Broadway) from the hotel and saw her speaking with
a young man (also in the pic) who appears to be a driver or possibly a
hotel valet.
Separately, I saw one of the Dodge minivans (from the parking lot)
dropping off a young man at the Hotel
{name temporarily deleted}, which is adjacent to the
Hotel
{deleted} on the same block on Broadway; later on, I saw the
driver of that vehicle in that reserved parking lot, parking the
minivan. A different minivan -- a white Nissan one -- was parked just
outside the Hotel
{deleted} for about an hour; its dashboard/
windshield placard also said WRP.
So to sum up, there was movement of both persons and vehicles between
one small parking lot, one city street block, and two upscale hotels;
all of which are very very close to each other in a quite busy part of
central downtown Portland.
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more pics to follow laterThanks for this incredible summary!!
