Hello from Oregon, land of
much moisture!! After getting off to a bumpy start things are starting to look
really great here. The scenery is beautiful; I guess that is why everything cost
and arm and a leg.
Newport is on the coast and you
can smell it! It’s a nice place to visit, but we have finally decided they
are stuck in the 60s. It does not matter what type of food or shopping you will
hear 60s music. The fog is usually pretty bad here in the mornings and evenings. We have yet to walk on the beach, but have seen the Sea Lions and most of the other
tourist trap stuff. In ways it is very comparable to Ruidoso.
Eddyville (where JR’s
office is located) is a small rural community. There is a post office there and
now Yaquina River Constructors. A train runs through the jobsite every day and
you don’t have a clue when that will be. The job is to take 7 miles of
2-lane dangerous hwy and make it into 2-lane not so dangerous hwy. Right now
if you go off the road on the north side you have 3 ft from the white stripe till you run into a mtn. On the south side of the hwy you have 3 ft and you will either land in the river or on the train track. To make this new road there is a huge mountain they will have to carve through and
clear making 10 miles of new hwy. So glad I don’t have to deal with the
headaches! So far they have spotted bears, elk, deer, and a bobcat up there. There will be several bridges to build that will be done in the rainy seasons (Nov-
March). One will be 1000 ft long and 200 ft high just to cover a creek.
Now on to our house hunting
experience, I do not recommend this to anyone!! After calling several listings
in the papers just to leave messages we started getting discouraged. It turns
out people/businesses rarely answer phones here and hardly every call back. Once
you find a place you have to put money on it or it’s gone. That makes it
a very stressful experience.
We found a great house in
between Kings Valley and Pedee!! It’s a 5-bdrm/2 bath 2 story on 10 acres
set up for horses. In this case the neighbors are taking care of renting the house. I love these neighbors and think we will have a wonderful time riding horses
together and much more! The neighbors have a few of their pregnant mares on the
land and the owner is leaving his 2 horses. There are also the neighbors pigs
(mama’s, babies, and one big daddy) in the barn area. There is a creek
that runs down the side and it has a thicket of blackberries in the pasture. There
is a possibility we could do a lease to own deal on this one. Sounds perfect,
huh? This puts us about 20 miles to Corvallis (college city) or 15 miles to Dallas
(tad smaller, but good jobs).
Right now our 2nd option
house is a 2 bdrm/2bath 2 story on 2 acres not set up for horses, in Kings Valley. Things
I do not like about this option our: #1 It still draws water out of the river,
therefore you run the risk of no water in the summer (happened 20 yrs ago), must change filters every 2 weeks, it does run
out of water in the storage tank sometimes, it goes through tons of filtrations, and in the winter you might have to climb
in the river and unclog the intake pipe! #2 They had horrid RATS last winter
that ate holes in the house, they think they might still be living in the walls! Thank goodness we didn't have to fall back on this one!!!
We
signed the lease on the 1st choice and are very excited! We also did a lot of antique shopping and found tons
of western stuff, cheap. Oregon is also known for their wine so we had to sample around some. I had never heard
of wine bars until Oregon.
We
went through some rough weather Friday night and Saturday, but nothing to horrid. It was to miserable to be out by
the water or even outside much.
I
will say the Portland airport is very easy to enter and exit. It's a 2 + hr drive from our new house to the
airport and it goes much faster than any driving in NM.
We
will be moving to Oregon in 2 weeks and are very excited!!
