Day 13 (7/23) – Hotel breakfast and the discovery that Corinne’s fall in the shower the night before cost her the inside corners of her front teeth. Thankfully, no medically-significant damage done. Her dentist said the aesthetics could be addressed if she wants in the future, but it makes sense to wait to do so until after any orthodontic work gets done.
The morning was spent across town at the Albany Historic Carousel and Museum. This facility’s genesis was in the early 2000’s when a local woman decided Albany should have a classic carousel and then spent years building community support and raising funds until finally being able to build the facility. They received the raw mechanism of an old carousel as a donation and established their own from-scratch wood shop and paint shop to produce the working carousel they operate today. They also have a handful of classic horses on permanent loan from the owners which they keep in a museum space.
They’re still in the process of building the initial set of creatures for the carousel, but the carousel is almost full. The work is all done by hand with solid wood. We took a short tour of the carpentry shop (sadly no one was working at the time). The paint shop can be looked into next to the gift shop. Neat place. Lots of intense dedication to the crafts involved and the care shows in the quality of the work they’ve produced.
The carousel has 3 rings of animals. The inner 2 move up and down. The outer ring doesn’t move, but you get to reach for the brass ring. I grabbed many plastic rings, but we didn’t go around enough time for the brass ring to show itself (I was the only person on the outside grabbing for rings).
Heather rode a servel, Corinne rode a dragon, Jess rode a cow, and I rode a bison.
Lunch at a DQ Grill-n-Chill and then on to the Cascades Raptor Center in Eugene. More birds that are either recuperating or unsuitable for release into the wild. We caught an educational talk by one of the keepers. A doe and fawn were lounging on the property. Another deer down by the road.
With some time to kill yet, and not much more distance to go to our destination for the night, we drove back across Eugene to the Eugene Science Center (dwarfed by the neighboring athletic complex for the University of Oregon). A small facility with a commensurately low price, it was worth the entrance fee for just the 90 minutes or so we had. Not many people there so we were mostly able to just roam around and interact with whichever exhibits we wanted. Corinne attempted to block all movement in the fluid-dynamics simulator.
Stayed the night in Roseburg at a Holiday Inn Express. Went to Garden Buffet for dinner (Chinese food).