ROAD TRIP! Setting up House in Eugene

Image: A.N. Smith-Lee

It being Saturday, the first thing we wanted to do was 1. Eat breakfast 2. Go to the Eugene Saturday Market/farmer’s market downtown. The Saturday market was filled with craft items such as tie-dyed T-shirts (a big fashion item here, judging from the number of people wearing them on the street), earrings, paintings, essential oils and several booths with glass pipes – pretty, but I wonder how hot they would get once lit. We cruised the produce side which was full of gorgeous stuff, from Thomcord grapes to 10 different varieties of peppers. No doubt, this is a fruitful growing region!

After wandering around scouting for a breakfast place, we came upon an extremely popular waffle place (waffles are as ubiquitous as tie-dye here, and infinitely more digestible – or so I thought). The name was Off the Waffle (there’s some kind of pun here, but I’m not getting it. You’re off your waffle if you eat there?). Our waffles were undercooked – raw in the middle – but I wasn’t sure if this was some hip Eugene style and I was too uncool to appreciate it or....I asked our seatmates, and found out, no, not supposed to be raw. The waffles were topped with an undercooked egg (in fairness, they did ask me if I wanted it hard-cooked). Within the hour, I had all the symptoms of mild food poisoning. I’m sure this isn’t the norm for the place, as it really was packed (and they offered me a $30 coupon when I told them about it – no, thank you very much).

We returned to the hotel (and the wonderful hotel bathroom…sorry, TMI), and attempted a late lunch at Sweetwaters on the River after things had calmed down a little. Great salads, though they were short-staffed that day and we spent way too much time looking at the (admittedly pleasant) view.

A novel fence in the Whit    image:A.N. Smith-Lee

We cruised the latest up-and-coming (and somewhat funky), neighborhood, the Whiteaker, known as "the Whit" by locals, notable  for it's artists and murals.

Next, a trip to Springfield, home of the Simpsons! No, not really – just a fair-sized town east of Eugene. We decided to take Rte. 58 along the Willamette River out to Lowell to see what a covered bridge looked like out here in the west (saw plenty of them in Pennsylvania – another fixation, like lighthouses). Unlike the covered bridges I saw back east, this one didn’t seem to have the same function; though useful for keeping snow off the road, the ones in Pennsylvania usually were privately built and came with a toll. Whether that was the case here, I couldn’t find out.

The Dexter Reservoir outside of the town of Lowell captured the light beautifully, but as we drove east along the river into the cascades we were missing something: a river. It was shallow or dried up the farther we got into the mountains. This was shocking, especially since I imagined Oregon to be considerably wetter than central California. The concierge at the hotel said they had experienced “a California summer” – meaning no rain since May. Apparently, those who poo-poo global warming don’t travel north much.

Somewhat discouraged, we decided we needed beer – dinner at McMenamin’s North Bank was everything we had hoped, and after a beer flight and burgers, we were downright cheerful.

It was our last night in Eugene, in our lovely room at the Valley River Inn. The Inn was the largest Hotel and convention center outside Portland when built in the early 70s, and played host to Elvis Presley, the Bolshoi Ballet, Bill Clinton and other celebs. It’s still the town’s big ticket, and the location is great.