Eugene

Eugene was interesting.  It took us a little over 1.5 hours to drive from Portland and through the Willamette Valley... a lot of farms, rolling hills, and vineyards.  We tried out Eric's new GPS, and it was pretty cool knowing where we were going, even though we didn't really know where we were going.  First we drove up to the UO campus and then decided maybe we should check out downtown first. So we parked and hung out at the Saturday Market for awhile near the stage and ate lunch. After that we walked around a bit, and looked at downtown Eugene. The people were nice and interesting, a lot students, a lot of young families, and a lot of "granola eaters" (if you know what I mean). After we walked around we went back to the car and GPS'd our way to the Rose Garden and Skinner Butte. Skinner Butte was pretty incredible- from the top one looked over the entire town of Eugene, and off in the distance was the snow-covered Mt. Jefferson. The vegetation in Eugene is already so much different that Portland... it seemed much more rugged and dry. When we finished up there we drove through the UO campus, it's big and the neighborhoods that surround it are very nice. We looked at a couple housing areas, which we may apply for. A lot of decisions need to get made! Anyway, here is a link to the few pictures we took while in town: Eugene