We spent a week here, and really liked it alot. Its not too big, nestled in the mountains, and is pretty artsy. The local banking magnate funds a lot of art stuff. Right now there is the Doors of Oregon project. Thirty-three doors salvaged from a hotel that was torn down, given to local artists to paint scenes from around the state, and will be auctioned off at the end of the summer. I found 32 of them and took pictures, which are up on flickr.
We spent a couple of days looking around at property, and found it to be pretty affordable. Its also supposed to be drier here than farther north in the state. So we’ll put this town on our list of possibilities, but I don’t know about Oregon in general. The whole gas pumping thing really bugs me. I don’t think we should move to a state where I know I’m gonna get frustrated and ticked off every time we get gas. On the other hand, no sales tax is really nice! I think we should live on the Washington/Oregon border, in Washington. They have no state income tax, so we can live there, and shop in Oregon.
We didn’t do a lot of touristy stuff here, it was nice to relax a bit and get some schooling done. We did take a jetboat tour down the Rogue river through Hellgate Canyon. That was a lot of fun. And gorgeous. On the way back, they do a bunch of donuts in the water and get everybody wet.
We just got to Salem yesterday, and will stay here for a week. We have some friends and family to visit. It looks like there is a ton of stuff to do all over the state. Its really hard to not try and see everything, but we have to balance sightseeing with normal, stay at home days too, and not clean out our bank account by doing everything that sounds interesting.
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