The BackgroundI'm sure that most of my friends (and family) were surprised to learn that Mary and I had decided to move to Oregon. The move was probably prompted on my part because having been born in Medford, I had always felt like a Webfoot at heart. Mary was probably influenced partly because of (1) A sense of adventure that would be different from the many years living in Vallejo, Napa, Suisun City, and Vacaville. All of these locations are within 30 miles from the place where she was born and raised. (2) The fact that Sisters, Oregon, is right around the corner from our house. For those of you that are unaware of what that means, every year on the second Saturday in July, Sisters is home to the world’s largest outdoor quilt show. Mary is a quilter. Enough said? Mostly though, I think that she decided to move to Oregon because I have always been drawn to this state like a salmon that returns to its spawning ground. She loves me enough to allow me to return - that and probably the quilting thing.
We had both grown up in Vallejo when it was a relatively small town with a small town atmosphere, in spite of the fact that it had "boomed" during WWII as it was home to Mare Island Naval Shipyard. There was a large influx of people that moved to California to gain employment in the industrial complexes that churned out products and equipment in support of the war buildup. The San Francisco Bay Area was certainly a large part of that effort, and Vallejo, in turn, was no small part of that. In 1940 there were about 20,000 people in the greater Vallejo area. During the peak of WWII the workforce on Mare Island exceeded 40,000, and Vallejo itself was over 100,000; the families of the workers having settled in. By the time Mary and I were entering grade school the war was over and the population of Vallejo had dwindled to the 25,000 range. Although that sounds like a pretty large town for the late 1940's, the atmosphere was still that of a small town, in fact almost a "ghost town" because of the great reduction resulting from most of the war-time population returning home.
When we were looking for a new home in Oregon, our criteria included:
(1) An area with a relatively small population.
(2) Large enough to have a variety of stores and restaurants.
(3) An "active adult" atmosphere, but not a Del Webb type of megalopolis.
(4) Recreational areas that would include the things we liked to do.
(5) Lots of sunshine and little rainfall.
(6) Mary would have the final say when it came to the actual location.
I had looked on the Internet via Google to try to find information. I found locations in Ashland, Medford, Grants Pass, Cave Junction, Roseburg, Klamath Falls, Redmond, and the Portland area. I immediately discarded the Portland area as being too populated and too wet; the two locations east of the Cascade Mountain Range as being too cold. I knew that Mary would not want to live in an area where it might snow. In August of 2004 we were in Grants Pass for the Josephine County Fair and decided to check out our list of locations. One by one we eliminated them. Condos and townhouses seemed just too close-quartered after living in a country setting on 10 acres for 20+ years. The Rogue Valley, my first choice because it was close to my youngest brother Lloyd, and it was an area I was familiar with having hunted in the area every deer season for the past 30 years or so with Lloyd, Bill, my other brother Ted. Mary pointed out that during the winter it could not only be extremely foggy, but that the fog was due for the most part by large amounts of rain. She likes the sun; I don’t care for the rain. Cave Junction was just a little too small and didn't meet the "store and restaurant" criteria. We had one last place to look - Roseburg, and Mary went to the library in Grants Pass to do her own search on the Internet. That's when she discovered that I had eliminated the Central Oregon area, which I did in deference to her, knowing that it gets a little chilly in the high desert.
We eliminated Roseburg because the development requirements were such that you did not buy your lot. You leased it. That seemed pretty shaky to me as there did not seem to be any real control on keeping the lease from possibly increasing to the point where it might not be affordable to live there – in the house you had built on somebody else's land. We drove over the Cascades to Redmond and checked out the homes at The Falls at Eagle Crest. We gathered information from the sales office and drove back to Grants Pass. I was thinking that it was too bad that it was so darned cold in the winter because I liked the high desert. I had liked it ever since 1965 when my older Ted had moved to Mammoth Lakes to teach school. I had managed to find an excuse to visit him at every chance, partly because I liked to hang out with him and partly because I really liked the country. Mary was probably just thinking about Sisters being a short drive away. Anyway, we went home to Vacaville and soon Mary announced that she was willing to go back and give Redmond a serious look. I spent some time on the Internet again looking for climate comparisons between Vacaville and Redmond. I will have to admit that I was somewhat surprised when looking at 10-year averages that there was only a 10-degree difference on a month by month basis between the two locations. The other statistic I learned was that the average precipitation in Redmond over the same 10-year period was 8.5 inches. Vacaville weighed in at 25 inches, but I knew for a fact that in the narrow valley where we lived, the rainfall was closer to 40 or 45 inches.
I honestly tried to dissuade Mary of the merits of moving to that location because I really felt it would be too cold for her. I did not want to go through the process of having a house built, moving, and then having to leave because of the weather. We made another trip to The Falls in September and decided to pick out a lot and start the process. During the next year we made numerous trips to Redmond either to check the progress on the house or to review changes that we incorporated into the plans.
On October 1, 2005, we moved into the new house and prepared for our first winter. As it turned out, it was the most severe winter that the area had experienced since the early 1980's. I had expected to shovel a little snow off of the driveway from time to time, but I never expected to shovel it four times in one week. Starting on Mary's birthday (November 28) it snowed so much that we hurried home from Sisters in the late afternoon because I had neither chains nor snow tires on the car. (You don't have to ask what we were doing in Sisters do you?) We also cancelled going out to dinner that evening because of the amount of snow that had continued to fall. The next day I took the car into town to have studded snow tires installed and to buy a snow shovel. My neighbors had loaned me theirs when they saw my pathetic attempt at snow removal with a flat-bladed shovel. Several more times that winter we would awaken to a new blanket of white. The good thing about this particular location (elevation about 3,000 feet) is that if you are patient and wait a few hours it will melt from the asphalt surfaces. Except for the first storm that started on Mary's birthday, most of the snow would be entirely melted by the next day. That first storm dumped about 18 inches of snow over 6 days that stayed until just before Christmas. Thereafter, when it snowed it was usually just an inch or so and would be entirely gone by the next day. However, it seems to have been an unusually cold and wet year in a lot of places. Vacaville made national news with stories of flooding, and the Rogue Valley seemed to have made up for the low rainfall of the past decade as well. In any case, if we have seen the worst of it for a few years we will survive quite nicely.
Footnote: Although this area really does have four seasons, the dramatic differences between summer and winter are most noticeable. The photo album "Neighborhood Photos" shows the contrast. You will find some pictures in the "Trekker Hikes" album that show off fall colors and the spring flowers a little.
Photo Album
Mp3 Streaming Playlist
