"Where thou art, that is home."
-Emily Dickinson

We'd come back from our Yellow Island adventure with a full awareness of the ticking clock.  There are so many things we like to do out west each year, and we always have a hard time fitting it all in. 


 

One annual "treat" we afford ourselves each year is a night at McMenamins Edgefield.  If you're not familiar with McMenamins, you're missing out on something really special.  McMenamins is (now) a bunch of restored sites across the Northwest, from restored theaters like the Bagdad Theater and Pub in Portland, OR, to Edgefield, a restored poor farm built at the turn of the 20th century.  Edgefield has the main hotel, which has been restored in a decidedly playful way.  Each room is painted with murals and quotes about a former poor-farm resident, and the halls are similarly festooned with faces and fanciful scenes everywhere -- even on the pipe-elbows which run along the ceilings.  Everywhere you look on the 38 acre site you'll find something you missed at first glance.  Edgefield includes a vineyard (from which McMenamins makes their own wine in the Edgefield Winery), a brewery, a distillery (great pot-stilled brandy and gin!), a chipping wedge golf course (where you're encouraged to take your beverages along), a spa (complete with meandering hot-spring), several pubs, a movie theater, organic gardens, and a couple of restaurants.  . . . read more