RURAL OREGON FROM COAST TO WILLAMETTE VALLEY

Rural Oregon has never looked better through my windshield.

Looked so good I extended a drive by hours just to see more. No, I wasn’t lost.

The backroads from Charleston to Coos Bay showed places I’d never seen, and I like to think I keep my eyes open.

It looked like rural Alaska without the moose.

No houses for miles, then a few regular rural houses with cars in the front yard. A gated compound of big well-kept houses all the same design and color looked out of place.

What was that estate doing in the middle of nowhere? Now I want one.

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Coming into south Coos Bay had a nice rural Oregon feel to it. Then it was mixed residential and commercial before hitting 101.

It was so nice I did it twice.

I stretched the drive to Portland at Reedsport by going straight toward Florence instead of the right turn to Hwy 38 with I-5 at the end.

I extended it even more after turning right in Florence for Hwy 126 to Eugene, taking a left on 36 instead. Since I was on a roll I ignored the right turn to Junction City and went straight north on a mystery highway along the east side of the Siuslaw National Forest.

Narrow lanes, lots of curves, it showed Oregon beauty. I didn’t see any motorcycles but it looked liked a road to ride. Then I got passed by a rabbit car and chased it at higher speeds than I’d been going.

You can do that with a road rabbit clearing the way. It turned into a Grand Prix track.

I lost them when I slowed down for small communities with speed limits. Rural Oregon manners.

It didn’t look like people living along that road had jobs nearby. They liked woods life enough to commute to work?

Rural Oregon Land Changed Heading East

I turned right on Hwy 34 to aim southeast toward Junction City. Why not take a loop?

In no time the forest crowding the highway turned into huge expanses of smoothed fallow land.

The idea of farming was up close and personal with planting, growing, and harvesting right outside the window like I was in Iowa where they do it over and over from one generation to the next.

The same as Oregon when mid-westerners moved here.

It looked like money, but I’m a hazel nut orchard fan; I like trees in ordered lines with trenched in water. Add a golf green-like border yard and a planting shed made of beams and it’s a complete package.

Life On The Land

Whatever the crop, working the land never sounded easy. It’s a dream washed in sweat and doubt until the weather cooperates and it all turns out as it should.

It doesn’t take a thousand acres in Eastern Oregon to understand the land, or a hundred acres in the Chehalem Mountains AVA.

This land was cleared by farmers who walked the Oregon Trail beside wagons full of supplies and tools and grandmas. Land that grew urban Oregon.

Their dream for a better place is our shared dream to keep it alive no matter where you live.

We can always make it a little better. Do you have an idea?

Leave one in comments.