Oregon Geotourism

March brings the southward movement of many migratory land birds and as an avid birder I wanted to share the many birding opportunities that can be found in Oregon.  The Oregon Cascade Birding Trail (OCBT) is a self-guided tour highlighting nearly 200 prime birding destinations designed to showcase the region's birds and spectacular scenery.  This blog will focus on the Mt Hood Loop of the Oregon Cascade Birding Trail.  Let's get settled first before we begin our birding adventure.  There are Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild member inns near many an OCBT trailhead where you can begin your day with a northwest culinary breakfast and the geotourism knowledge our innkeepers have to share.

The Mt. Hood Loop of the OCBT rises from the Columbia River to Mt. Hood, the highest point in Oregon, and combines some of the best of the region's birding with legendary Oregon scenery.  This loop traverses the Columbia River National Scenic Area and the Mt. Hood National Forest and visits 19 birding sites.

Lewis and Clark traveled the Columbia Gorge corridor.  The Lewis' Woodpecker, Clark's Nutcracker and Clark's Grebe were named in their honor.  Many species of waterfowl and raptors including the Bald Eagle inhabit the river and further up the mountain you'll observe woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches and so many more.

One of my favorite hikes, and I have many, is the Tamanawas Falls trail.  The falls are amazing at 100 feet high and 40 feet wide.  The trailhead footbridge is the midpoint of a 8-mile stretch of the East Fork of the Hood Riverhosting nesting Harlequin Ducks.  A riparian habitat and mature mixed-conifer forest surrounds the trail to the falls.

After you've explored the trails on the north side of Mt. Hood head on around to the south and western flanks where the Sandy and Zig Zag Rivers lead you past Trillium Lake and through Wildwood Recreation Area.  The Brightwood Guest House B&B, the site of a former pioneer way station, can provide a home base while searching for the elusive Pileated Woodpecker.  Bring out the hiking boots and binoculars, pack your bags and begin your Oregon Birdwatching adventure.

The Wings and Wine Festival is scheduled for May 8, 2009 at Fern Ridge.  The extensive wetlands provide unique habitats for a variety of wildlife, including breeding birds and a large variety of birding opportunities for all levels.




Pre-registration is required for some activities.
There are many nature walks planned and a van tour of local wineries and tasting rooms.  Nothing like mixing a little geotourism and culinary tourism on the same trip!

Where to stay? Fern Ridge is located 10 miles west of Eugene, in Oregon's southern Willamette. These Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild's inns await your arrival. They are sure to provide a quiet place to unwind, a restful night's sleep and an outstanding gourmet breakfast to start your day.

Kick off the 25th Annual Tulip Festival, March 25 - April 25, with a weekend of Oregon-grown craft brews, clogging, tulips, and family fun! Wooden Shoes and Tasty Brews will run opening weekend: Saturday, March 27th and Sunday, March 28th from noon to 6pm.

The event will feature Willamette Valley craft brewers, Bavarian-style food, clog dancing, and live music. Wooden Shoes & Tasty Brews is family-friendly and as always, children are welcome.

Brewers featured: Seven Bridges Brewing of Silverton; Alameda Brewing Company of Portland; Pale Horse Brewing of Salem; and Fearless Brewing Co. of Estacada. Their signature brews will be available by the taste, by the pint, and to take home in growlers (64 oz. bottles poured on site), bottles, and by the case.

Just up the road from is the Feller House Bed and Breakfast, an Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild member.  Built in the late 1860s, the large home is located in the beautiful Willamette Valley on Oregon’s famous French Prairie where hops became a cash crop and still are today.   Two delightful guest rooms are available for your enjoyment.

There are so many Oregon Geotourism Adventures waiting for you to explore.  And with almost 90 unique bed and breakfasts scattered throughout Oregon, serving up Oregon Culinary Breakfasts, you are sure to find an inn to complete your vacation plans.

The Cornerstone B&B, the newest member of the Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild, was built in 2006 on the south side of Cooper Mountain and is a gateway to wine country overlooking beautiful green pastures, orchards and vineyards.

In the warm summer evenings guests love to watch the crimson sunset from their rocking chairs on the large covered deck surrounding the house.  If you listen carefuly you can hear the owls hooting in the twilight and watch over 20 species of birds coming for their last meal of the day at our feeders.

There inn was built with your safety in mind.  There is not a single step that you have to navigate between your car and your room.  One guest rooms is specifically designed to meet ADA compliance.  Every room has its own private entrance from the deck that surrounds the house. 

The Cooper Mountain Nature Park, atop the butte where the south ends of Beaverton and Aloha meet, with spectacular views of the Tualatin Valley and Chehalem Mountain from its open south slope, just minutes from the inn. 

Cooper Mountain Nature Park has 3.5 miles of gravel surface trails over its 231 acres. The looping trail system covers well the public land at the summit of the 774-foot high butte.

One has so many eco friendly travel options in Oregon and the member inns of the Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild are happy to share ways to enjoy geotourism with you.

Story by Terry Richards ~ Oregonian

"It may look like a grave marker of a long lost surveyor.  But it's not.

The piece of inscribed stone sunk into the Coast Range forest, not far off U.S. 26, marks the only place in Oregon where four county points meet.


There's another Four Corners in America that is a big-time tourist destination. That would be the only place where four state boundaries meet: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

In Oregon, our Four County Point in the Tillamook State Forest notes the meeting of Clatsop, Columbia, Washington and Tillamook counties.

The trailhead has a brown four counties sign on the north side of U.S. 26, at milepost 34.8 (this is 2.9 miles west of the Timber-Vernonia junction, or about 39 miles west of Portland).

It takes about an hour to make the one mile hike and back to see the marker and stand on all four counties at once. That makes Four County Point a quick leg-stretching hike when you're driving between Portland and the northern Oregon coast."

So let me help you plan your Oregon Geotourism experience.  Spend a day or two in Portland, experience amazing Northwest Culinary treats and the unique Portland bed and breakfasts of the Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild.  Then head out Hwy 26, visit the Four Counties Marker before traveling on to an Oregon Coast lodging resting spot.  A perfect Seaside Oregon bed and breakfast is the 10th Ave Inn B&B, where panoramic windows provide views of the ocean, Seaside's famous Promenade, beach homes and the coast mountain range.

And then there is the drive down the Oregon Coast.  Talk about an Oregon Geotourism Experience?  But that's another blog.

Geotourism is all the rage and there's plenty of it to experience in the state of Oregon.  The Iwetemlaykin State Heritage Site is one of the Oregon State Park system's newest parks.  (If you want to know how to impress your friends, it's pronounced "ee-weh-TEAM-lye-kin").  The site is the former Marr Ranch, a 60-acre parcel adjoining the Old Chief Joseph Gravesite and Wallowa Lake, part of the ancestral home of the Chief Joseph Band of the Nez Perce.

The site is very accessible along the road to Wallowa Lake.  This image give you an idea of what the grounds look like in January.

For an authenic Oregon experience, consider spending a few days in Joseph, Oregon, and visiting the Iwetemlaykin State Heritage Site at different times of day.  In the early morning you'll probably find wildlife there.  During the day, watch the sun cast varying shadows on the Wallowa Mountains.  In the afternoon, visit Wallowa Lake and the Old Chief Joseph Gravesite.  Come back to Iwetemlaykin in the evening as the coolness descends.

You'll find two authentic Oregon bed and breakfasts in Joseph that are part of the Oregon Bed & Breakfast Guild. 

• Belle Pepper's Bed & Breakfast offers stately lodging in the former home of Frank D. McCully, one of (Old) Chief Joseph's white neighbors.  Frank McCully's headstone can be found on the grounds of the Old Chief Joseph Gravesite near Wallowa Lake.
• Bronze Antler Bed & Breakfast is located nearby in Joseph.  This 1920s period bungalow is restored in the European Arts & Crafts style.  The inn's library includes many books on local Oregon history to round out your geotourism experience.

It's always an intense but fun & rewarding experience when the Oregon Bed & Breakfast Guild board gets together for a meeting and the meeting this week was no exception.  Since we're a small group we could forego the Salem Oregon hotels and hold our meeting at our Administrative Assistant's home in Salem Oregon.
































Pictured back row (L to R): Wayne Bailey (Youngberg Hill Vineyards & Inn); Debbie Lusk (The Pfeiffer Cottage Inn); Sandy Parker (Britannia at Terwilliger Vista); Patrick Arbuckle (Forest Springs B&B @ The Historic Heiney House); Tana Phemester (Nob Hill Riverview B&B); Anne-Marie Lizet (C'est la Vie Inn).  Pictured front row (L to R): Fred Wickman (Prospect Historic Hotel, Motel & Dinner House); Mary Pellegrini (Old Parkdale Inn); Heather Tyreman (Bronze Antler B&B).  Not pictured: Suzanne Hansche (Blue Plum Inn); Jane Nichols (Hood River B&B); Pam Walter (Heron House B&B).

So, what'd we do?  The short list:

1.  Welcomed 5 new board members and one President-Elect (!)
2.  Discussed our collaboration with Travel Oregon's Culinary Tourism program, National Geographic's Central Cascades Geo-Tourism Project and the Northwest Coalition of Bed & Breakfast Associations.
3.  Heard a report from our board members attending the recent Oregon Governor's Conference on Tourism.
4.  Discussed our new OBBG website under development.
5.  Had a wonderful potluck lunch including wines supplied by one of our Oregon wine country lodging members, Youngberg Hill Vineyards.  Thank you, Wayne!

Our next meeting will be Monday & Tuesday, November 9-10, 2009 at the Lobenhaus Bed Breakfast and Vineyard near Carlton, Oregon.  If you're an OBBG member and would like to learn more about the board and what a great time we have working for you, give a call--there are still three positions vacant!

This past week we had the 2009 Annual meeting of the Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild and every Oregon region was represented. From the Eastern region to the Oregon Coast, from Portland to Crater Lake, the Willamette Valley to Mt Hood and the Columbia River Gorge and of course from Central Oregon where our gathering took place.

The Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild is 88 members strong and counting.  As a professional association of Oregon's individually operated Bed and Breakfast inn, our mission is to assure travelers of consistently high standards in a variety of accommodations. 

The annual meeting was held at the Best Western Ponderosa Lodge in beautiful Sisters and we would like to thank Sandy Affonso, innkeeper of the Blue Spruce B&B, for her enthusiasm while planning this event.

The Oregon Guild supports our members through networking, advocacy and education.  Workshops included information on our Association programs.  The Green Certification program of the Guild is designed to make sustainable travel a reality in Oregon.  The OBBG blog is written by our innkeepers promoting our inns and our state as a tourist destination and we will provide our members the tools needed for them to become guest bloggers.

Time is always set aside for roundtable discussion with topics from marketing to networking.  From scones to gardening. 

A representative from Travel Oregon will present a report on the partnerships between OBBG and the Oregon Tourism Commission (dba Travel Oregon), the Oregon tourism force.  We have partnered with Travel Oregon in promotions such as Oregon Bounty, the Central Cascades GeoTourism Project and Oregon 150

This gathering lasted only a day and a half but our innkeepers return home fueled with enthusiastic ideas to make your stay at an Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild a truly memorable experience.

The Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild is 88 members strong and counting.  As a professional association of Oregon's individually operated Bed and Breakfast inn, our mission is to assure travelers of consistently high standards in a variety of accommodations. 

The annual meeting for the Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild is being held on April 6-7, at the Best Western Ponderosa Lodge in beautiful Sisters, Oregon.



Our keynote speaker will be Sue Kirby, "sparkingly upbeat, funny, inspirational, practical and down-to-earth".  The topic will be "Celebrate the Ordinary into Extraordinary" and we look forward to her humorous real-life stories to empower us as we prepare for our busy summer season.

We support our members through networking, advocacy and education.  Workshops will include information on our Association programs.  The Green Certification program of the Guild is designed to make sustainable travel a reality in Oregon.  The OBBG blog is written by our innkeepers promoting our inns and our state as a tourist destination and we will provide our members the tools needed for them to become guest bloggers.

A representative from Travel Oregon will present a report on the partnerships between OBBG and the Oregon Tourism Commission (dba Travel Oregon), the Oregon tourism force.  We have partnered with Travel Oregon in promotions such as Oregon Bounty, the Central Cascades GeoTourism Project and Oregon 150

We look forward to seeing our members at the 2009 Annual meeting of the Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild.

As a seasoned traveler you seek out unique cultures, local heritage, distinctive environments and un-matched scenic beauty.  Coming to the Central Cascades of Oregon will not disappoint and staying at an bed and breakfast in Oregon, especially an Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild member inn, is sure to add to your experience.

The National Geographic Society and it's local partners, are producing a Geotourism MapGuide and website that conveys geotourism information, sites and experiences.  They will choose the best destinations for travelers seeking that perfect experience. 

Four Oregon Bed and Breakfast member inns have been nominated for inclusion in The Oregon and Washington Central Cascades Geotourism Project.  Be sure to leave a comment.  We look forward to hearing from you.


The Prospect Historic Hotel offers warm and inviting accommodation in the natural beauty of Oregon.  The hotel, built in the late 1800s and listed in the National Register of Historic Places.....learn more 






The Old Parkdale Inn B&B surrounded by one of the largest pear growing regions in the nation, minutes from the Mt. Hood National Forest, with awesome views of Mt. Hood......learn more







Eagle Rock Lodge sits on one of the most scenic properties on the banks of the McKenzie River.  Over four acres of rhododendron and azalea gardens rest beneath cedar, fir and maple trees......learn more






Forest Springs B&B sits nestled in the Gresham Buttes.  On 3 acres with a parkland setting, with natural springs and creeks, it sits at the base of more than 2000 acres of forested open space.....learn more 




The Geotourism Project site "will become a place to continue sharing experiences, memories, and recommended places in the Central Cascades.  We want you to keep coming back...time and time again....", and allowing OBBG members to be part of your unique Oregon Experience.