By Melissa Wagoner Summer is a great time to visit the many museums, gardens and educational venues located within a two-hour drive of Silverton. But, if expenses ae running high, the price of admission can be a barrier. That’s where the Silver Falls Library’s Cultural Passes can help. Offering free admission to places like the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, the […]
The Oregon Garden Resort has received Tripadvisor’s Travelers’ Choice Award for 2023. The award is a highly regarded within the hospitality industry. Only the top 10 percent of hotels worldwide receive the honor. Winners have earned positive traveler reviews and ratings over the past year. “This achievement is a direct result of the hard work, dedication, and passion of our […]
By Melissa Wagoner One of the many benefits to visiting one of Oregon’s 108 State Parks is that most are off the beaten track. But that can also make those visitors driving electric vehicles (EVs) a little bit nervous. “Older EVs, especially the used EVs on the market today, have much lower distance ranges,” Jo Niehaus – an Oregon Parks […]
By Melissa Wagoner “Opening the world through education,” is the mission of the educational travel company, EF Tours, but it’s also the mission of Stacie Harker – an avid traveler and science teacher at Butte Creek Elementary. “I think international travel is so important,” Harker said. “To get insight on American culture by seeing other cultures… to see culturally that […]
By Melissa Wagoner When Dr. Tim Richardson was in dental school at the University of Washington, he had a dream of becoming a traveling dentist. During the summer of 2006, he flew to Kenya with a Washington-based nonprofit to find out just how to make his dreams come true. “I stayed in a little volunteer hut with no running water […]
By James Day Silverton-area residents who commute in and out of the Salem-Keizer area will be facing another detour. Marion County will be replacing the bridge over the Pudding River on Hazelgreen Road NE near Torvend Road. The good news is that project planning is just beginning and that construction is not scheduled to begin until 2024. The bad news […]
By Melissa Wagoner With the cost of gas soaring to well over $4 a gallon, more people than ever are considering an electric vehicle (EV) which, according to David Deckelmann – owner of a Nissan Leaf since 2019 – is a very good thing. “I will always have a gas car because I love vintage cars,” Deckelmann, a self-proclaimed car […]
By James Day The Silverton Road bridge over the Little Pudding River between Silverton and Salem has reopened to through traffic. The $6.4 million bridge work on the span on Highway 213 is completed to the extent that it is safe for motorists to use, although a few loose ends will be tidied up later this spring, said Steven Preszler, […]
I just spent an entire morning negotiating the administration and shipping of three specially ordered COVID tests so that my children and I can travel to visit their grandparents in a little over three weeks – and I’m still not sure I have it all straight. The challenge lies in the timing, in order to travel to this particular state, […]
By Melissa Wagoner There have been a lot of sleepless nights for Oktoberfest board members since the COVID numbers began climbing in mid-July because, by then, planning for Mount Angel’s annual festival was well underway and organizers – having spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in planning – were loath to pull the plug. “We thought long and […]
By James Day The six-month detour for bridge work on Silverton Road between Silverton and Salem appears to be going well, project officials say. “Overall the detour has been very successful, although there is always an adjustment period with any detour and this one was no exception,” said Steven Preszler, the project manager with Marion County Public Works. The county […]
By Melissa Wagoner The Pacific Northwest is a land of movers and shakers – when it comes to geology that is. “The PNW is known as an active margin,” geologist Leslie Moclock described. “That means it’s a place where different tectonic plates interact with one another, pushing and pulling the Earth’s crust and driving exciting, fundamental geologic processes. It’s why […]
By Steve Ritchie When I arrived in Ushaia, Argentina last month, I found many Ushaia souvenirs printed with the slogan fin del mundo which can be roughly translated as “end of the world.” A city of about 80,000 people at the southern tip of South America, Ushaia is definitely remote. It is the southernmost city in the world, in fact. […]
By Melissa Wagoner “In a heartbeat,” is Anna Koch’s instant reply when asked if she would once again hike the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) – the 2,650-mile track from Campo, California, on the United States-Mexico border, to Manning Park, British Columbia. “I actually didn’t finish and that’s a huge bummer to me,” 20-year-old Koch lamented. “I want to go back.” […]
On a cool autumn Senior Night the Kennedy High football team checked off the final box in an undefeated Special District 2 season. The defending state champion Trojans dismantled Culver 40-6 on Oct. 25 to improve to 5-0 in league play and advance to No. 1 in the OSAA’s Class 2A rankings. And because Chemawa shut down their program midseason […]
By Melissa Wagoner Teaching geography can be difficult, but it is especially tricky when the students are five years old. “We don’t have a specific geography curriculum,” Savannah Sinn, a kindergarten teacher at Bush Elementary School in Salem, lamented. “And they don’t come in with anything.” In order to give her students a more well-rounded geographical education, Sinn has had […]
By Melissa Wagoner 19-year-old, Anna Koch is setting out on the journey of a lifetime – a 2,663 mile trek along the Pacific Crest Trail. “I’m starting in Idyllwild, [California,] which is the worst spot because they’re getting dumped on every day,” Koch shuddered. “I’m totally nervous because this year is a record snow year. I’d like to think I […]
By Melissa Wagoner “Since this has happened I’ve had these moments where I’m like, ‘Am I really alive?’” avid outdoorswoman Leslie Drapiza of Silverton said during a recent retelling of the harrowing rescue that saved her life in the early hours of Feb. 5. “I had gotten complacent,” she admitted. “I should have been better prepared.” Drapiza, who is […]
By Melissa Wagoner It took Lisa Gerlits a number of years to find the joy in traveling with children. The mother of three – Alexander, 11; Annabel, eight; and Mieke, five – Gerlits and her husband, Michiel Nankman, have traveled to the Netherlands, Nankman’s home country, since Alexander was just a year old. “It’s not the sort of carefree, free-wheeling […]
By James Day Riley and Kyle Kramer had a bit of a different summer vacation. The Silverton brothers played baseball, yes, but they did it 3,500 miles away in the Dominican Republic. Riley, who just started his senior year at Silverton High, traveled to the Caribbean with Northwest Diamond Sports of Tualatin. Brother Kyle, a sophomore, and mom Tara, owner […]
By Melissa Wagoner Emily and Tyrone Reeder love living life outside their comfort zone, which is why this August they are packing up their bags and heading to Cambodia. “We like being in another culture,” Emily explained. “We actually enjoy not understanding and being able to communicate. We come into it knowing it’s going to be hard.” Although neither Tyrone […]
By Nancy Jennings Karen Choules is a “homebody” who loves decorating, painting furniture, cooking and gardening. These qualities suit her well as the new owner/innkeeper at Silverton’s The McClaine House, which opened last year during Memorial Day weekend. The stately two-story historical landmark was originally built in 1878 by namesake Jake McClaine and his wife, Sophronia. Now, the refurbished cream-colored […]
By Brenna Wiegand Though her party consists of herself, her dog and two horses, Stevie Anna Plummer is taking the whole world along on her 1,000-mile trek through Patagonian back country. Plummer will remain live on social media throughout her journey through this vast, mostly uninhabited region. Plummer, 29, grew up outdoors, a young rodeo rider with a great love […]
By Steve Ritchie It was 9 a.m. on a Monday morning in early February. We were God knows where, bouncing around the pot-holed back roads of Cuba in the second rear seat of a 1948 Plymouth sedan packed with nine people and all our bags. Needless to say, this was no tour group. The older, long-haired Frenchman in front of […]
My wife and I were heading for the airport, on our way to pick up one of kids. Oh, did we get I-205ed. To the ultimate max. It took us an hour and a half to get from Clackamas to the airport, a distance of 14 miles. This was on a Saturday night. When we took our son back to […]
