The Long Tom Country Trail- Part 1
A trip to the countryside. Ride your bicycle along peaceful country roads, or find dozens of reasons to get out of the car.
This trail is packed with so many treats; you will need a couple of days to see everything. If you’d rather not drive yourself, call Sunshine Limo for a limo party bus, luxury cars, or vintage convertibles to tour the trail. 541-344-5466. Be sure to check out the Campbell House City Inn and Dining Room in Eugene for overnight stays, 541-343-1119, and call professional photographer, Jamie Hooper at Digital Dreams, 541-952-0387, for pictures, prints and frames of your trip through the Long Tom Trail.
Along a forty-mile loop, road signs will lead you to stops along The Long Tom Country Trail. The tour offers an alpaca ranch where you can pet the animals and a fiber shop filled with woolly goodies, five wonderful wineries offering tastes of some of the best pinot gris and pinot noir in the state, a garden nursery that even houses Red Eagle Appaloosas, a beautiful 18 hold championship golf course, strawberry fields, peach orchards, a family sheep farm with blankets and paintings and photography, a wild mustang ranch, an antique barn, seasonal festivals at the grange hall, produce stands, vegetable gardens, artist sheds, a mini mushroom farm, pastries, a gallery of artistic metal furnishings, a cozy gourmet deli, and a unique restaurant in a restored church.
To find the treasures of the trail online, go to www.longtomcountrytrail.com and visit all the shops—buying your gifts for holiday shipments!
1.
Lingos Antiques
At the light at High Pass Road, turn west (Guaranty Chevrolet is on the corner). After about 2 miles, stop at Lingo’s Antiques—a huge red barn filled to the rafters with treasures. Be prepared to spend some time wandering through the aisles and chatting with Pat Lingo.
2.
Ridge View Farms
Right out of Lingo’s to Territorial, take a right. Travel up the hill and half way down; take the driveway on your left. Kathleen and Robert Ridge will show you a delightful garden filled with homegrown vegetables, fruits, flowers, and plants with over fifty traditional and heirloom varieties.
3.
Hasselblad Acre
Right on Territorial, travel back to High Pass Road and turn right. Continuing west after another couple of miles, turn right on Turnbow and take your first gravel road to the right and the first driveway to the left. This is a unique exotic mushroom farm where you can purchase a mushroom garden for your kitchen. Lana and Al Hasselblad will show you their fantasy art, gallery and gifts. Be sure to call ahead at 541.952.0426 to tell them you’re coming!
4.
Holly Creek Farm and Gallery
The second driveway to the right. Here you’ll discover Holly Creek Farm and Gallery. This is an old sheep shed reconverted to an art gallery where Catherine Manning not only displays her amazing photographs and art pieces, but demonstrates how to turn fleece into wool on her spinning wheel. (She might even have her famous peanut butter cookies cooling on a platter.) You can purchase her wonderful warm wool blankets made straight off her sheep.
5.
Stillridge Studio
Turn right out of her driveway and a quarter mile up the road on the left you’ll see the sign for Stillridge Studio and Art Gallery. Glenna and Dave Barker welcome you with open arms. Her studio is chocked full of oils and prints and glasswork from Rhonda Farfan. Ask about their amazing terraced garden and Dave will guide you through a munching tour of his vegetable beds.
6.
Aprils Acres Alpacas
Turn left out of their driveway and at the top of the hill, you’ll spy alpacas romping in pristine meadows. A left on Jaeg and your first driveway to the left brings you to ranchers Herb and Susan DeBates who will tell you all you need to know about raising this exotic animal with the funny face. Browse through her shop and once you touch an alpaca teddy bear, you won’t want to put it down.
7.
Pfeiffer Winery
Open Friday, Saturday and Sunday all year round. Turn left out of her driveway and less than a mile later you’ll find Pfeiffer Winery, a piece of heaven at the end of a country road. The Pfeiffer’s Tuscan Villa home is surrounded with lavender beds, roses, ponds, orchards, and a 70-acre vineyard. Take the right fork driveway and park up by the winery. Follow the red doors. The tasting room, a walk through the winery itself, is an unexpected combination of rustic comfort and elegance with cozy corners and a fireplace to linger with your wine. Taste Pfeiffer’s estate grown pinot noir, chardonnay, pinot gris, and a lovely rose merlot called Blushing Bride. Pfeiffer is a boutique winery, offering small quantities of high-end wines that are not distributed beyond their doors. Their signature pinot noir will haunt you!
8.
High Pass Winery
Leave Pfeiffer and trace back down Jaeg Road turning right on Turnbow and right on High Pass Road. At the fork, take a right onto Lavell road and follow it up and down the hill. As the road winds down back to the High Pass intersection, the gravel road to High Pass Winery is on your right. Drive through the vineyard and you’ll find yourself at their cute tasting room featuring stellar pinot noir, pinot gris and a variety of dessert wines. They are always open on weekends.