Alsea

"Where in the heck is Alsea?" you ask. To which I reply, "Out in the middle of no where!" Alsea, Oregon is not incorporated so you won't find it on a map. It has about 600 people in the general area with a school serving students K through 12, a general store called John Boy's Mercantile, a gas station, a post office for zip code 97324, a library, the Hope Grange, 2 churches [Assembly of God and Baptist with a nearby Church of Christ in Lobster Valley], and a restaurant. Alsea is on Highway 34 on the scenic route to Waldport on the central Oregon coast. That's about it. I live about 2 miles from the post office. Nice people live here and the kids are the luckiest of all who go to a school where everyone has the opportunity to go on to college thanks to the Clemens Foundation set up by a timber family years ago.

Alsea, Oregon was listed in a book on the best places to retire in the United States, probably because it is unlikely that taxes will ever go up.

I always say that it takes me about an hour to drive into Corvallis because I like to leave early to make sure that I get to my destination. There are 2 1/2 miles of severe, narrow curves at Mary's Peak with a speed limit of 20 mph. You can reach Corvallis in 45 minutes but sometimes you have to wait for road construction or farm equipment rolling along at a slow crawl. The sign says that Alsea is 25 miles from Corvallis or 20 miles from Philomath, and I've checked it with my speedometer. During the snow and ice last week, I was crawling along at 10 mph to 35 mph. If all conditions are just right following all the speed laws, it is possible to almost make it to Philomath in almost 30 minutes but I like the slow, lazy, looking out the window at the trees, mountains, and scenery pace.