This time it was Lori and I off for a road trip to Albany Oregon that in the early days was something. Form those early days Albany still boast four registered Historical Districts with around 800 historical buildings. We started our walk at new building built for the Albany Carousel Museum in 2017. Of course being Tuesday it was not open along with all of the other museums, many of the restaurant and so much more. We were able to look in the windows to get an idea of all that we were missing and promised we would return to see inside when we were 80 if we didn’t die first.
We next walked around the Historical Business District. Then on to the two residential districts. One for the Republicans (the party of Lincoln) and the other for the Southern Democrats. Much of this would seem very unimpressive unless you put it in context to the time. Outside of Albany most of the pioneers were living in rustic log cabins or hollows out tree stumps (yes the tree were that big back then).
After our walk around we went to Calapooia Brewing for lunch. Calapooia was the name of the indigenous people who lived here before white man kill almost all of them with small pox and a trail of tears death march to a small reservation with out means to feed themselves. Next we headed off to see the historic site of Camp Adair (troops called Camp Swampy) a WW2 infantry training camp. At one point Camp Adair housed 40,000 troop and had it been incorporated, it would have been the second largest city in Oregon. From there we headed back home but not without crossing the Willamette River on the Wheaton Ferry (yes we still use ferry boats to cross rivers here) one of Lori’s long time bucket list items.
