It's officially been one year since Laura and I made the move to Oregon. We bought a townhouse last fall in a quiet neighborhood that happens to be directly adjacent to the apartment we had rented. It takes a few minutes longer, but we can still walk to the MAX light rail stop at Orenco Station. And we're still only about five miles from where Laura's sister and her family live so we get to see them a lot. We even child sat for our ten year old nibling recently. We just watched a Disney show and ate snacks and pizza so it was pretty easy.
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| Laura and me at the Celtic Fantasy Faire |
Laura has been able to continue working for the same parent company as in Virginia, and basically just transferred to a new veterinary hospital owned by that company in Beaverton, OR about 8 miles from where we live. It's an all new staff but she's adjusted well. After one year she's no longer a newbie and is probably a veteran there now! I was able to keep my east coast job and work entirely remote, which has worked out great, although I miss not being there in person some of the time. I sold my car before we left Virginia and so far we've managed to get by with just one vehicle.
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| Trees in the neighborhood this spring |
I've gotten involved in the Irish traditional music community here. I had taken about 5 or 6 years off from playing Irish music, so it's been a challenge getting back up to speed, but it's been fun. It's really well organized here, which I like. I try to practice every day and there are opportunities to play in sessions each Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and sometimes Saturdays here. I can't go to all of them all the time but I get around and the people seem to like me even though I'm struggling to keep my head above water.
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| Skittles enjoying sun on the patio |
Laura enjoys gardening in the small back patio space we have, and she recently got a Weber Q series grill and has been grilling out every chance she gets, which I get to reap the benefits of! She is also enjoying having her sister nearby so that they can get together for breakfast or just to hang out. Laura and I both continue to be avid readers, with Laura consuming fantasy novels, while I like the mystery fiction of writers such as Robert B. Parker, Richard Stark, Michael Connelly, Lawrence Block and Max Allan Collins. I can't tell you how many times I've been to the local library this past year.
Skittles is doing well. She turned eleven this year. I take her on daily walks around the neighborhood, and we often take her to local trails or paths that allow dogs. Not all parks allow dogs here because they say that the presence of dogs distresses the local wildlife. Even friendly pups like Skittles! There's a pet store I walk Skittles to about every other week to stock up on locally made treats, which is her favorite recurring thing to do by far.
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| Skittles in chair |
For actual hiking, we learned that the northern terminus of Portland's famed Forest Park Wildwood Trail is at a trailhead only about a 15 minute, mostly rural, drive from our house. We don't get there as often as I'd like, but there is some great hiking nearby. There's also a brewery about a ten minute walk from our house called Vertigo that we like to go to. It's about the closest thing we have to the community that was built up around Origin Beer Lab in Ashland, VA.
We've gotten into local sports and have been going to one game a month, either for the minor league hockey team The Portland Winterhawks or the minor league baseball team The Hillsboro Hops. When one season ends the other begins, so there is never a break in the action. We can take the MAX right to Veterans Memorial Coliseum where the Winterhawks play, whereas the Hops' stadium is only a couple miles from our house. So it's either a short drive or Uber, or we can even take the bus there and have in fact done that.
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| Hillsboro Hops baseball game, 6/13/25 |
We love visiting the Oregon Coast and have done excursions to favorite towns such as Yachats to the south and Astoria to the north. We've also ventured into Washington state to check out the McMenamins Kalama Harbor Lodge, which is beautifully positioned on the banks of the Columbia River. And we've done some some day trips to nearby Oregon towns, including Silverton and St. Helens.
Last month we did our first real week-long vacation since moving here and went to the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington state, near Victoria British Columbia. That was a great trip and I can't wait to go back. This fall I am planning a local "European" vacation for us. There's a Norwegian themed town (Poulso, WA) and a Bavarian themed town (Leavenworth, WA) that we're going to visit. Leavenworth looks like a German mix of Deadwood, SD and Telluride, CO. Should be fun!
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| Moran State Park - Orcas Island, Washington |
As far as live music performances and concerts, I'm not going to as much of that as I used to, but that's OK. We saw Leftover Salmon on New Year's Eve at Revolution Hall and Phish when they came to the Moda Center in April, plus Irish guitarist John Doyle at a jazz club in Portland, and The Murphy Beds (Jefferson Hamer and Eamon O'Leary) at a house concert in Portland last January. There's a local Phish cover band called Shafty that is really good. Upcoming, we have tickets for Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, and for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.
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| Local Irish group Kate and Lads performing at McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern |
Our first winter here was a fairly mild one, the locals tell us. With lots of rain from November through March as expected, and one day of snow. It stays dark a lot during the winter, but that didn't bother me. Spring took a while to get here with lots of false starts, but now it's starting to feel like summer. If this year is like last year, there will be all sun, blue skies and almost no rain from now into October.
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| A rainy spring day along the river in Portland! |
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