There is a moment on the drive into Wheeler County when Oregon seems to stretch out and exhale. The roads grow quieter, the hills take up more of the windshield, and the constant pull of the everyday world begins to lose its grip. Just outside Fossil, Wilson Ranches...
Some Oregon Coast trips are built around a hotel room and a restaurant reservation. This one is built around a campsite, a baited crab ring, and the possibility that dinner might come out of Nehalem Bay. I went to Kelly’s Brighton Marina last year, and I had an...
There are Oregon Coast camping trips where you pull into your site, unfold a couple of chairs and spend the evening staring at the ocean. And then there are camping trips where you climb into a boat, drop crab rings into an Oregon bay, haul up dinner and return to...
Oregon’s best fall waterfall hikes pair the first returning rains with golden vine maple, fewer summer crowds and trails that feel made for cool, cloudy days. For the best all-around experience, start with Silver Falls State Park; choose Sweet Creek for an easier...
If you’re heading south through Portland anytime over the next several weeks, your usual route is about to look very different. Beginning Friday night, September 11, the Oregon Department of Transportation will shut down southbound Interstate 5 through Portland’s Rose...
September in Oregon is apparently refusing to go quietly. Summer may technically be winding down, but somebody forgot to tell the state's event calendar. The rest of the month is packed with rodeos, giant coastal festivals, live music, Oktoberfest celebrations,...
Louie paced endlessly. Nasha was found soaked in urine in a dark den. Lyla desperately wanted to get away. Bently had been declawed and lived with severe arthritis. More than a year after their rescue from Oregon’s West Coast Game Park Safari, their lives look almost...
If you waited out the summer Multnomah crush, Tuesday, September 8, 2026 is the first full day without the Multnomah Falls (I-84) Timed Use Permit. The Recreation.gov season ran daily from May 22 through September 7, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., for private vehicles...
Looking for Oregon geodes, crystals, or gemstones? The quick answer is that Oregon’s most satisfying finds are usually not loose, ready-made geodes. They are thundereggs, agate, jasper, Oregon sunstone, and other material that rewards a little research, a legal place...
A recent rescue on the California volcano is a sharp reminder that a polished answer from a chatbot is not the same thing as a sound mountain plan. Three novice hikers from Roseville, California, were rescued after becoming stranded during a Mount Shasta climb,...
There are plenty of reasons to wander an Oregon beach in late October. The Pacific gets moodier, fall storms begin rolling in with more frequency, and those gray skies and crashing waves somehow make a warm drink and a long walk on the sand feel even better. But this...
There are two kinds of folks. There are the people who look at an insect hovering over the lavender and say something useful like, “Oh, that appears to be Bombus vosnesenskii, the yellow-faced bumblebee.” And then there are the rest of us: “Look! A chunky fuzzy...