Oregon Journeys
Click on the images to view my journeys. Here is my tracking sheet that I use to track where I have been.
When I got my first job shortly after obtaining my master's degree, I finally achieved a measure of financial freedom. In brainstorming what to do with my newfound adult life, I thought of the idea to visit every town in Oregon. This would complement my perfectionist and completionist personality. This would obviously take a long time, but I had nothing limiting me in that regard.
Other many weeks, I narrowed down the criteria of what is considered a "town" to visit. Eventually, I came up with a the following list of types of places:
Incorporated cities are the most obvious places to go if I wanted to explore the state, but I realized that using only the list of cities does not include some of the smaller towns. I therefore needed to include a more inclusive type of place.
Census designated places add many more places to visit, some of which are equal in size or bigger than cities. However, adding this to my list of places to visit does not include some of the smallest towns that I wanted to see. I therefore needed to expand my list further.
If I were to simply go to Wikipedia and grab a list of all "unincorporated communities" from each county's page, I would be given a massive list of locations, some of which include 10-home places like Ashwood, which would be an appropriate target place, and others might be seemingly barren locations that have no trace of even the name of the community posted anywhere: an example being Donnybrook which is 10 miles away from Ashwood down a gravel road. I therefore wanted to filter out barren places (or places were it is simply a chore to get to) like Donnybrook, and keep the exploration-worthy ones like Ashwood. I realized that many of these outlying rural areas usually need a zipcode. Since there is a central service area for each code, usually named after the most populous area, this would present a reasonable list that would filter out the barren places. Following this rule, instead of going to Ashwood, Donnybrook and Horse Heaven, I could instead only go to Ashwood, and save myself a 90 minute roundtrip on a hilly gravel road.
I also wanted to visit the (accessible) ghost towns of Oregon. There are some that are very remote or on private property that I would skip, but there are surely others that are reachable and would present a very unique exploration experience. Ghost towns can be categorized into different groups per Ghost Town Classifications:
Now that I have a list of places to visit, I need a way to track that I have actually been there. I eventually came up with a list of types of things to photograph to serve as a "bounty". Types of things include city halls, city welcome signs, post offices, municipal parks, or simply a photograph of the entire location if a place is small enough. With a list of places to visit and types of things to photograph as proof, I was now ready to start exploring the state.
Click on the images to view my journeys. Here is my tracking sheet that I use to track where I have been.