When I was at the OMA thing in Salem, Mayor Colleen Johnson of La Grande, Mayor Dale Delong of Island City, and Mayor Dennis Sands of Joseph all autographed our map of Oregon. Honestly, I haven't been to that corner of the state since the summer of 2001. I've been meaning to take Laurie out there since we met because that's probably my favorite section of Oregon. It's hard to explain, but it's basically a mixture of all the best parts of the wet third of the state and the dry two-thirds of the state: You have all the perpetual green of the wet side, but then you have the remote expanses of the dry side. Give me 20 acres outside of Minam and I'm happy.
Maybe I'm being stupid or myopic here, but I honestly don't understand why any right-minded Oregonian would ever want to leave the state when we have all the little towns around the Blue Mountains to explore. Did you know that there's a restaurant out there that's only accessible by plane or horseback? I hear they have little goat cheese appetizers even. There are three stages of food, in my mind: Regular food that you eat every day, food that you eat when you are camping that tastes incredibly yummy because you're sleeping outside, and--finally, the perfect stage of food--a meal that had to be packed in via horseback. C'mon. How could a 3-day, 4-night trip to Cozumel compare to horsed-in goat cheese appetizers? It just can't.
Like I said, I've been trying to get Laurie out to northeastern Oregon since before we got married, and it looks like this is the year. We have ten days booked here. With a little luck, we'll explore a little more of La Grande, Island City, and Joseph. And hopefully get the autographs of Mayors from Enterprise (looking forward to that one), Halfway, Union, and all the other little towns from my favorite corner of the state. And then Laurie will want to move there so screw Portland. Come try our artisan goat cheese; We're farmers now.
30 down, 212 to go
Wanna be neighbors? We'll move with you.
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