Walton Ranch Interpretative Trail & Brownsville, Oregon
Eugene,
Oregon: Hello, Dear Readers. And so we begin the
last leg of our journey - back to our old hometown, Eugene.
Today we decided to take yet another route between Bend and
Eugene and now I think we are out of alternatives and have
tried them all in the motorhome.
A view of the Three Sisters from the vista point between
Bend and Sisters
Route 20 through Sweet Home is very pretty,
but there is a wicked eleven-mile-long 6% down grade. Ouch.
The road is good and wide and absolutely gorgeous - it is
like you are driving in a tunnel of forest the entire route.
The road is one of the interesting Oregon Scenic routes:
Over the River and Through the Woods Scenic Byway.
Walton Ranch Trail head
We stopped at Trout Creek to walk the
Walton Ranch Interpretative Trail.
Walton overlook trail
The view of the meadow - often filled with elk, but not
today.
The Walton Ranch is now a game preserve and
through the ranch is the old Santiam wagon road, built by
the pioneers to reach eastern Oregon. The wagon road was a
part of the first transcontinental auto race in 1905!
Wild Iris
There were an incredible amount of flowers
blooming along the trail. We found several groups of the
rare wild iris, huckleberry, trillium, berries, dogwood and
other unknown pretty flowers of all sorts. The forest
smelled so good - very sweet, with everything in bloom. At
the trail head, Trout Creek flows into the South Fork of the
Santiam River. The road continues west past Green Peter
Reservoir, Foster Lake, a fish hatchery, several nice parks
for lunch stops, campground and RV parks. There are several
historic covered bridges along this route (must take a
detour - none of the bridges are actually on Highway 20). We
stopped in
Historic Brownsville, Oregon for our lunch at a local
sandwich shop and took a stroll through the pretty little
town.
Brownsville, Oregon
Brownsville, Oregon advertising mural
Italian Villa-style mansion, the Moyer House, 1881. Now a
museum.
Here is a rarely-seen sight: the inside of our motorhome
with the slide-rooms stowed. This is how our living space
looks when we are "in motion" - the kitchen and sofa are on
a slide room that retracts for travel. When retracted, we
can use everything except the gas oven.
Our mansion on wheels - with the slide room in
RV Park:
Premier RV Resort - Eugene, I-5 Exit milepost 199