Road-Tripping In Central Oregon

After many years of traveling around Nevada with one of my best friends, we had the opportunity to do some camping in Oregon: Woo-hoo! Road-trip in a new state!

This hub is going talk mostly about Central Oregon, as that's where we did the bulk of our travel. However, we had so much fun, chances are there will be more trips in the future. We used the same formula we've used for trips in the past: easy to drive chunks of travel, low-cost campgrounds, a mix of eating out and cooking for ourselves, attractions that we both find interesting and theme music mix lists on our iPods for in the car.

My friend and I were going to meet up at a camping event for an online school in which we are both enrolled. She drove to Oregon from California, and I took the train down from Washington State to meet up with her. The main event was going to be at Silver Falls State Park, where we'd be for about five days. We wanted to have a few days on the road before we both went home, so that gave us the timeframe for our road trip, and our starting point in Central Oregon.

Interestingly, as I researched places to go, the trip sort of developed a movie theme. Once we had a few spots picked, we kept looking for other movie-related places to continue the trend.

• Salem - "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" was filmed here.
• Silverton - location used for "Bandits" starring Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton
• Silver Falls - location used for "Twilight"
• Brownsville - location for much of "Stand By Me"
• Sisters - location for "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues"
• Government Camp - location of the Timberline Lodge, featured in "The Shining"
• Portland - location for "My Own Private Idaho" and many others

So... We started the adventure in Salem, with me arriving via Coast Starlight from Seattle. I pretty much slept most of the way, which made it go a lot faster. Once my friend and I got all my gear loaded into the car with hers, we headed slightly northeast out of Salem. Our first destination was Silverton, where our goal was to visit a local grocery store and get fresh fruits and veggies, and a big block of ice.

From Silverton it was a very short drive southeast to Silver Falls State Park. Our group has a couple of the spots in the group camp area. It was easy to find level spaces and there were great trees all about so the tents could be pitched in shady areas. This makes them much cooler in the days. No matter what type of year you go to Silver Falls, be ready for rain. We got lucky and were blessed with just a few sprinkles mostly at night.

When we left Silver Falls we saw some stunning controlled burns-in-progress. That sure made for some freshly scorched earth. From Silver Falls we went back to I-5 and headed south. Our destination was Brownsville, OR. This tiny town was used for most of the exterior scenes for the 1986 movie "Stand By Me" and they have a little festival for this in August. In summer, you can camp in Pioneer Park for just $10. Lots of people were there besides us. They have a cute, self-guided walking tour of the filming locations.

From Brownsville, we continued east into Central Oregon.  Our goal was to head over McKenzie Pass to see the Dee Wright Observatory.  The campground host at Brownsville told us that just a few weeks prior (July 21st), he and his wife had wanted to go through that pass but it was still closed for snow!  We felt that since it was August 14th, we'd take our chances and if we had to turn back and go around, so be it.  The road goddesses were with us, the pass was open AND we totally missed the striping crew at work doing repairs.  McKenzie Pass is at 5,960 ft so if you want to get out and check out the Observatory, bring a jacket!  The 360-degree views are stunning and set in the middle of a huge lava field.  It's like being on an alien planet.

From McKenzie pass we continued back down into Sisters, OR.  Cute town, lots of options for lunch, but not before 11:30am.  However we had more on our schedule that day and pressed on to Madras, heading northest out of that town to get to the Richardson Rock Ranch.  We got there a touch too late to be able to effectively dig our our thundereggs, but they've got more than enough for the rockhounding enthusiast at their shop.

From the rock ranch, we headed northwest to Government Camp and the Timberline Lodge.  Remember the huge hotel from the horror movie "The Shining?"  This is the place they shot the exteriors.  It's a huge ski lodge built in the 1930 and you can see Mount Hood above the clouds way in the distance from the front parking lot.

The last leg of our trip took us into Portland where we decided to indulge in a classic urban pleasure:  shopping at Powell's Books.  This is one of the best new and used bookstores I have ever visited and it's very easy to find yourself having spent a few hours in what seems like a few minutes.