Originally Posted by
Shifty
You should go up and hang out in Corvallis or Albany for a day or two, West Salem is really quite nice too.
Corvallis is on the radar. It has the advantage that I could move there while my daughter is doing D.O. school. Her school is in Lebanon and her husband works in Eugene.
We had a neighbor who simply got tired of the effort it took to keep the thugs from taking over Sladden Park. She finally sold her house a few years ago and moved to Corvallis.
Corvallis has the First Alternative food store, decent cycling in the area (still have to be very watchful of time and place, and the trends don't look favorable for it continuing to have decent cycling nearby) and it is always nice to live near a university. The downside is that Amtrak doesn't run through it.
What's Albany got to offer, other than the train station? Years ago, when I first came to Oregon, I took a job delivering ice just so I could get the lay of the land. Albany always seemed kind of screwed up, kind of like Medford. The bike hate seemed palpable, and I was in a truck. I have ridden through it a dozen times or so on my way to/from PDX and none of those rides changed my opinion. What did I miss? It's easy to overlook awesome local loops when one is just passing through.