So my bicycle tour this year will be the Willamette Valley Bikeway. Yeah I have probably been on more exciting tours before but I just needed a nice simple easy tour this time around. Plus I have been wanting an excuse to ride the Zephyr back home. I will be picking the train up in Sacramento after taking the Starlight from Eugene.

Traveling the bikeway, my days are going to be pretty short. Maybe 40 miles a day. I usually do 60 but with the spacing of the major towns along the bikeway, it is either a 40 mile day or an 80 mile day. While I would do 80 miles if I had to, I don't really have to. The benefit of the nice short riding day is I will have time to spend in some of the towns. A luxery I don't often have.


So I was looking around for things to do along the way. I ran across this for Salem.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attract...tal_Museum_of_Mental_Health-Salem_Oregon.html

A tour of a mental hospital?? Really? OK if you are a movie buff this is where One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest was filmed. I could see maybe visiting it for that reason but other than that I just can't figure out why someone would find an old mental hospital interesting. I guess there is not an awful lot to do in the Willamette Valley.

 

So my bicycle tour this year will be the Willamette Valley Bikeway. Yeah I have probably been on more exciting tours before but I just needed a nice simple easy tour this time around. Plus I have been wanting an excuse to ride the Zephyr back home. I will be picking the train up in Sacramento after taking the Starlight from Eugene.

Traveling the bikeway, my days are going to be pretty short. Maybe 40 miles a day. I usually do 60 but with the spacing of the major towns along the bikeway, it is either a 40 mile day or an 80 mile day. While I would do 80 miles if I had to, I don't really have to. The benefit of the nice short riding day is I will have time to spend in some of the towns. A luxery I don't often have.


So I was looking around for things to do along the way. I ran across this for Salem.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attract...tal_Museum_of_Mental_Health-Salem_Oregon.html

A tour of a mental hospital?? Really? OK if you are a movie buff this is where One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest was filmed. I could see maybe visiting it for that reason but other than that I just can't figure out why someone would find an old mental hospital interesting. I guess there is not an awful lot to do in the Willamette Valley.

Where have you been? This is the big tourism draw in these backwater towns with big buildings and they don't know what to do with them. In Winston, WV, there is another one - we toured on our way down to see the eclipse in August.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, subsequently the Weston State Hospital, was a Kirkbride psychiatric hospital that operated from 1864 until 1994 by the government of the U.S. state of West Virginia, in the city of Weston. Wikipedia

https://maps.google.com/maps?num=10...a363ea66b5327:0x573031bac9b61f7e&gmm=CgIgAQ==

 

Do they give free Electroconvulsive therapy demonstrations?

 

So my bicycle tour this year will be the Willamette Valley Bikeway. Yeah I have probably been on more exciting tours before but I just needed a nice simple easy tour this time around. Plus I have been wanting an excuse to ride the Zephyr back home. I will be picking the train up in Sacramento after taking the Starlight from Eugene.

Never really felt the need to see that torture chamber in Salem.

The Starlight segment of the trip will be great. I really enjoyed the Parlor car even at night for the open space when we took the round trip from Portland to LA a few years back in a sleeper car.

 

Never really felt the need to see that torture chamber in Salem.

Exactly my point.

The Starlight segment of the trip will be great. I really enjoyed the Parlor car even at night for the open space when we took the round trip from Portland to LA a few years back in a sleeper car.
View attachment 144077 View attachment 144078

I am looking forward too it. I have business class for that segment. But I am really looking forward to the Zephyr that goes though the Rockies. My concern is that these long distance trains will be discontinued soon and I wanted to take the chance to ride them now. I did the Empire Builder last year and it was great.

 

The Willamette Heritage Center looks like a cool place to visit in Salem.

 

Sacramento there is a train museum I plan to visit. There is one in Portland too but I don't think I will have time to visit that one.

I was hosted for an over night stay in Mcminnville on my way tot the Oregon coast. My host drove me around his sleepy little town. After I got back, I learned Mcminnville is where the Spruce Goose is now housed and they have an air museum! You would think my host would have said. "Hey do you want to see the Spruce Goose" or "You know the Spruce Goose is in town, I have seen it a million times but if you want to take a ride out there..." Nope not on word.

 

A tour of a mental hospital?? Really? OK if you are a movie buff this is where One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest was filmed. I guess there is not an awful lot to do in the Willamette Valley.

Give my regards to Nurse Ratched.
The only other reference I have is they are the origin of some of the Hops I use, Willamette.
Max.

 

Darn, I wanted to say something funny, but now you ruined the moment...

 

A tour of a mental hospital?? Really?

Spinniker I say be very careful with that or you could find yourself in unenviable situation of protagonist in EA Poe's System of Dr Tarr And Professor Feather!