McMinnville, Oregon

McMinnville, Oregon has come up in several conversations with friends as a potential future home for us. We added the city to our itinerary and decided to spend a few days here.

We arrived at Olde Stone Village RV Park in McMinnville on Tuesday afternoon, 12/7. Thinking it might be nice to eat dinner out, we searched “Yelp” for some options.  Many of the yummy looking options weren’t open on Tuesday. We finally settled on a place called, “Two Dogs Taphouse.” Most nights we cook for ourselves in the RV so it was fun to be in a locals hangout and enjoy dinner and drinks. We returned to “Benny” and after a day of driving decided to take it easy for the rest of the evening.

Downtown McMinnville on a rainy Tuesday evening

On Wednesday we spent most of the afternoon doing laundry. Six loads in 3 washers and 3 dryers. Boy, do I miss my beautiful washer and dryer!

 

Laundry day in the RV

In the late afternoon, we visited the “Evergreen Aviation and Space Museums” just around the corner from our RV park.

 

Mark with Captain Michael King Smith

This was an amazing place! So glad we took the time to visit.

The museum is the home to Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose. We were astounded by the size of it! It is difficult to capture in photos. The plane spanned almost the entire hangar building.  Did you know that it isn’t actually made of spruce? It’s made of birch. We tried to come up with clever names that included “birch” but there just didn’t seem to be any.

The view into the cargo area of the Spruce Goose.

 

The view into the cockpit area. If we had been there earlier we might have been able to sit in the pilot’s seat!

There were so many great airplanes on display. I liked the looks of this one in front of all the windows

I asked about planes that might have landed on aircraft carriers during the Korean War since my dad had been on them while he was in the Navy. This is what the docents pointed out to me. Apparently the wings folded up so that more aircraft could fit on the ship.

Here is another Korean War era plane.

Mark in front of a rocket

Me with the Mercury astronauts. When I was a kid I wanted to be the first woman astronaut. I bet that was the dream of many little girls of the time.

 

My Dad and I used to build models of the space capsules together. I think I was the only kid in our family who was really interested in the space program. Daddy used to wake me up no matter what time it was so that we could watch lift-offs and splash-downs together. That is a precious memory for me.

Apollo 11 - landing on the moon

The Lunar Rover

 

We cannot pass an infrared camera without checking it out!

Mark in front of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. The Blackbird grows more than a foot in length during flight as its skin heats up.

“Wings & Waves Waterpark” near the museums. There is a Boeing 747 on the roof of the building!

This is what dinner looks like in the RV. We cooked pot roast in the crockpot all day long and then enjoyed it in our PJs…

We learned that one of our favorite artists, Erin Hanson, has relocated her studio and main gallery to McMinnville. It is open to the public so we drove over to visit on Thursday. We were welcomed in and given a private tour by the gallery director. My photos don’t do her artwork justice. You can check out Erin’s work at https://www.erinhanson.com/

 

We were given a beribboned gift packet with these books and flyers

  

Erin Hanson works in oil and her paintings are highly textured. Her original paintings are very expensive but she is now reproducing her paintings using a 3-D scanner and 3-D printer. The results are AMAZING! I can hardly wait to have a home and purchase one of her beautiful “prints.” The 3-D versions cost about one-tenth what the originals cost and I bet very few people could tell the difference between them.

Following our tour of the Erin Hanson Gallery and Studio we enjoyed a delicious lunch in downtown McMinnville at “McMeniman’s Hotel.” After lunch we headed out to explore nearby cities. We really liked Wilsonville and it has made it onto our short list. Lake Oswego was absolutely gorgeous but the home prices there rival the prices in the Santa Barbara area so, sadly, we have eliminated it from our list of potential future hometowns. We ventured north to Portland and enjoyed the scenery along the way - so much so that I took very few photos.

No trip to Portland would be complete without a visit to the city block wide “Powell’s City of Books” bookstore and more. We spent just an hour there and made a small purchase. We will definitely return when we have more time.

 

 After dinner on Thursday evening, Mark put the lights on our Christmas tree - a much quicker task than any previous Christmas!

This is how we heat up our PJ pants in the RV! It’s COLD here! We just hook them onto the drawer handle above the heater vent. Don’t laugh - it works!

On Friday we decided to drive up to Washington state and check out the city of Vancouver. It is a pretty large city but we both really liked the “feel” of it. We found a real estate office and stopped in. We spoke with a realtor who has agreed to send us potential properties to check out. He also recommended a couple of residential areas for us to drive through. After a stop into the Maryhill Winery tasting room for some wine and a nosh, we did drive around a bit before it got to dark. Vancouver is tempting us!

“Cheers!” From Vancouver, Washington’s waterfront district.

We were supposed to check out of this RV park on Saturday but the weather forecast was for A LOT of rain and high winds. We opted to stay two more nights. Saturday was a down day for us. We played one of our new favorite games, “Flinch” after lunch and then Mark and I did our own thing the rest of the day.

Yes, he won! I haven’t beat him yet at this game.

 

My little rainy day snack while I made ornaments for our tree using some of the beads I brought with me. Mark practiced piano for much of the afternoon.

 

It’s hard to see just how cute it looks (at least to us!)

Today is Sunday and we spent the late morning and early afternoon in the Old Town part of McMinnville - 3rd street. There are several cute shops and many were open even though it was a Sunday. We had a yummy meal at the Mexican restaurant, “Los Molcajetes.”  We were pleased to have such good Mexican food so far north of the Mexican border.

 

Delicious chips and salsa!

As we walked back to our car we enjoyed some of the paintings on the sidewalks. Here are a couple of samples…

Mark bought these at a local artisan store and promised to make scones and jam for me one morning. The store had a “shop and sip” option. They served wine - I guess that’s a way to get around the mask mandate? We were there too early for wine though.

Here are Benny and Sparky in our spot at the Olde Stone Village RV Park. We will be leaving here tomorrow and heading to Eugene.

Awww… rain!

 Final thought…

McMinnville is a very nice place but was much bigger and busier than we thought it would be. There was so much traffic when we arrived that we quickly crossed it off our short list of areas to look at real estate. It does have a very cool old town but the “vibe” just doesn’t feel right to us. Farewell, McMinnville.