planning a ten day trip to the seattle area with the hopes of getting down to portland. Looking for alternatives to renting a car. Any suggestions or insights would be most welcomed.

Train or bus works. I have never seen anyone hitching that stretch of I-5 (gotta be a reason for that, is what I mean).

Hitchhiking is not an alternative. One seldom sees a hitchhiker in Washinton State. My experience is the same as suze--I have never in recent decades seen anybody trying to hitch a ride going south from Seattle on I-5.

Try craigslist. I've seen people post there looking for people to split gas etc.

I have never taken a bus, but I did take the train years ago and enjoyed it.

We've taken Amtrak many times between Portland and Seattle and it is inexpensive, convenient and comfortable. The trains have seats with lots of legroom or you can sit at a table. There are five trains a day between SEA and PDX. Go on the Amtrak website to check it out. Prices vary depending on availability of seats, like with the airlines. RT should be around $60. The trains from Portland to Seattle that originate in California have a greater chance of being late. Generally, they are on-time from Seattle southbound. The trip is about 3.5 hours.

I definitely vote for the train. I love trains and have occasionally taken the train on purpose to Seattle just for fun. Mid-week, off season, it can be pretty cheap. If you have AAA, make sure you get your discount!

Train.
My son just took the Amtrak train from Portland to Seattle , costing him about $75 rt and taking 3 hours.
He watched a movie, was quite comfortable and loved the views.
I have never seen a hitchhiker in Oregon...now that I think of it..
When you arrive in Portland, you are in the Pearl District, and you can take a bus or streetcar to various parts of town, so it is a good location for a Train Station ( which is also in an Historic building andd is very nice)..

Greyhound is $45 roundtrip (without any discount) and takes 3.5 to 4.5 hours.

I'm surprised to learn Amtrack makes the trip in 3 hours. Having often met Amtrack travelers in Seattle, I know trains often arrive later than scheduled.

Yes, happy, I had read that on these boards, so I warned him that he might have a 4 hour trip instead..he got there exactly on time and coming home was 15 min late.

At this moment, SEA-PDX is $72 round trip (if I wanted to leave this afternoon and return tomorrow) on Amtrak, before discounts. Book ahead of time and you can go (in February) for $56 round trip. I'd sure pay an extra $11 (even an extra $27) to take a train over a bus. On Amtrak, you can get up, walk around, visit the bistro car, etc. But, I just happen to like trains...

Travel time is scheduled at 3:30 though it is usually late, sometimes 30-60 minutes late, even on the shorter Eugene to Seattle trains (not Coast Starlight).

The part of the ride from Seattle south past Tacoma is very pretty, going along the Puget Sound, although I heard somewhere that Amtrak is re-routing to avoid that (maybe to improve these delays) someday in the future.

The trick about the train is to take the regular 'Cascades' line. It's the once daily 'Coast Starlight' which runs all the way down to Los Angeles that is notoriously late.

Yes, I have always taken the Cascades trains to/from Seattle, and even those trains can be 30-60 minutes late, usually due to waiting for freight traffic to pass, because Amtrak does not own the rail, so the freight companies that do own the tracks get first priority and Amtrak just pulls over and waits. Once we were an hour late helping another train whose locomotive had broken down and our train happened to have two, so they stopped while they detached our spare to give to the other train.

Yup, none are on time likely, that said... the Starlight can be 4-6 HOURS late -lol! Found that out the hard way returning from Salem, Oregon to Seattle... where the kind Amtrak clerk on the phone advised that I should switch my ticket to a slightly earlier train which might actually show up near on schedule.

Hm...the Coast Starlight. Brings back memories. I left Seattle 4 hours late, then was delayed an additional 8 hours coming into Sacramento. Amtrak gave up and decided to bus us to Stockton, train to Bakersfield, then bus to Los Angeles. The train ride from hell! I met a lot of interesting people on the train though, and Amtrak did give me a refund after writing an angry letter, so I guess it wasn't all bad. Definitely avoid the Starlight!

I wonder which one my son took, I think the coast.
He left here at 12:25 and got into Seattle around 4, he left there at 2:25 and got in around 5:45-6:00 ( on NYE) .. He said the seats were comfortable too.

* He just traveled for 15 hours to get to Oregon frm Japan so comfort becomes relative ... *

The train is often NOT late, and it is rarely late leaving Seattle. We could talk about "late" I-5 experiences. It is the major corrider between Vancouver BC and Portland and on down to California, and back-ups can be horrendous. The trip by road between Seattle and Portland used to take under 3 hours. Now I count on 3 1/2 frequently takes longer. The worst we experienced was 6 hours, when I-5 was completely closed due to an accident (and we were lucky we got there close to the time the road reopenned).

Let me just take the opportunity once again to editorialize about how short-sighted our current Congress (Democrat and Republican) is about Amtrak. While I don't think across-the-country routes from, say, New York to LA make sense anymore, the short runs such as Vancouver-Seattle-Portland-San Francisco-LA-San Diego make a huge amount of sense when air traffic is getting worse and worse every year. Integrating short-run Amtrak trains with the airlines would make a huge amount of sense; investing in better tracks, high speed rail, etc. would pay off later when airports wouldn't have to spend as much to expand. And it's far easier to secure trains against terrorist threats than it is planes.

I have mixed thoughts about that, Andrew. But this thread reminded me of the graphic in the Destinations section in yesterday's Oregonian. Something's definitely screwy when a PDX-SEA rt airline ticket costs more than rt PDX-JFK.

I agree that the I-5 is pretty terrible- 5 hours from Bellevue to Portland via the 90, though it was partially my fault leaving at 5PM on a Friday...