A small, quiet town by the sea is home to Oregon’s world-renown golf venues—Bandon Dunes Resort. Play one of the many challenging Scottish-style courses or head in for a cozy seafood dinner in Bandon’s cluster of fresh seafood restaurants.
By summer, I had settled on the most ambitious of all fantasies—to take trail horses on a two-day binge in wine country. In Oregon’s famed Pinot noir region lay a vast wilderness for exploration. Surprising chapters of a bigger story would emerge from that wilderness.
The McKenzie River Highway is home to hot springs, cold swimming, fishing and some of the best mountain biking for those who are ready for a little technical riding.
Historical lore dates Tillamook County’s first cheese to around 1856, when William W. Raymond separated curds and whey in a large vat. The growing season was too short, so settlers resorted to cows and surplus milk. Over the past century, Tillamook became synonymous with the 100-year-old Tillamook Creamery, whose medium cheddar was awarded the best at the World Champion Cheese Contest in Madison, Wisconsin this March. That quality no doubt contributes to the little-known fact that Tillamook Cheese Factory is the second most visited site in the state of Oregon. More than one million people each year peer through the observation deck windows to see one of the world’s best cheeses being sliced. Leisha Mizee-Riggert’s forebears emigrated from other cheese-producing nations of Holland and Switzerland and began to raise dairy cows four generations ago in Tillamook. Their family dairy farm, as with 110 others in the area, is a member…
Nearly a century ago, a deft-minded Governor Oswald West put his hand to his holster and drew out political genius rather than his pistol.
There’s a good reason it’s known as the Wallowa Country. An hour east of La Grande, you drop into a canyon along the Wallowa River, pinball around the bends and drive into a valley of small towns with a high-alpine backdrop worthy of a red-eye to the Alps. This is a vertical world that sits on the precipice of the Hell’s Canyon gorge and is home to more than thirty 9,000-plus-foot peaks, the most in the Pacific Northwest.
On May 14th, seven of us departed from the bridge at Grave Creek for a three-day float trip down the Wild & Scenic section of the Rogue River.
An interesting stretch from Grants Pass to the California Border reveals cavemen as political pranksters, The Duke, treehouses and Dutch Brothers’ origin.
Silverton rolls out of the Cascades to the west and over valley soils that support sheep farms, tree nurseries, a handful of vineyards and other agriculture. Fifteen miles west lies the state capitol, Salem, and forty-five miles north is Portland. Silverton takes after neither. Depending on where you look, Silverton is a sliver of artistic Ashland, a dash of Dundee wine country and dose of Eugene oddity.
