24 Hours with Kids in Eugene

“It’s too dark in here.” Isabel doesn’t care that The Hunter constellation is beaming on the skyline of the Science Factory Planetarium.

“Dere are monsters in here,” observes Fiona, Isabel’s twin sister. Suddenly Isabel has dragged her sister into a protest against darkness.

“Let’s get outta here,” I whisper to my wife, Sarah.

We emerge into a well-lit room where an iguana named Renegade is gauging our reaction from a tree in his glass case. “I see a dinosaur,” Fiona says, with her face pressed up against Renegade’s window.

“Come down from dere, dinosaur,” Isabel says with the soft-spoken tenderness of a mother. At 2 and 3 years old, kids are like atoms that fly at great speeds, bouncing off things until they find the right combination. Traveling with our two bouncing atoms requires spontaneity within a defined framework. And The Science Factory is just the first installment of a long list of such engaging activities for kids in Eugene.

Located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, Oregon’s third-largest city is ripe for family getaways come fall. This college town (home to University of Oregon) gets enough rain to ensure the pumpkins are big and ready for the picking, but also has moderate temperatures well into college football season.

Our next stop is at downtown Eugene’s Saturday and Farmers’ Markets, where the people vary from bearded men in Birkenstocks to Indian women in primary colored dresses. Here we find booths with jewelry, hemp clothes, pottery, woodcarvings, tarot card readings and more.

Hungry for lunch, we decide to skip past the face painting booth and indulge in our ritual food face-painting that invariably follows the girls’ inexpert eating techniques.

The smell of lamb kabobs, peanuts and beef draws us down a row of carts with cuisine from Afghanistan, Thailand, India and Mexico. We opt for fish and chips and eat it on the lawn while listening to acoustic melodies from the music stage.

“Watch me,” says Fiona as she links together hip-hop moves. She has her own bag of tricks to which neither dad nor mom can lay claim. And Isabel’s dance style, a flowing, flower-child choreography, accidentally matches the music. Has she been riding her tricycle to Phish concerts? Across the street, I spy Fenton & Lee Chocolatiers and the selfish part of “family travel” surges to the front. Sarah’s rich truffle and my sumptuous German chocolate pieces are really all about setting a responsible example for the girls. Right.

The girls apply their chocolate and caramel turtles to their faces like makeup. Time slips past us and into the prime dining hours. Sarah simplifies our restaurant choices by invoking the “loud-with-no-tablecloth,” rule that was crafted around our 2-year-old liabilities. Roaring Rapids Pizza, which overlooks the Willamette River just east of UO’s campus, has a vintage carousel, which means built-in entertainment for the girls, so it’s a go.

Dinner and the warm evening air put us at ease on the way back to the hotel. But we sense a recondite energy source surfacing through the giggles of the girls. Two minutes after we’re inside the hotel room, Fiona and Isabel have shed all of their clothes and are shrieking “Naken, naken” with every bounce on the bed.

In the morning we head southeast of Eugene to Northern Lights Christmas Tree Farm and pumpkin patch in Pleasant Hill. As we drive up a winding dirt road, we are confronted by a catapult, or trebuchet, that pierces the sky 25 feet up.

“Woah! What’s dat?” Fiona asks. “Is dat a digger?”

The catapult’s wooden arm and crisscrossing ropes are images from medieval wars and crusades. This one, however, has been decommissioned to fling pumpkins across the sky in a display that is triggered during every school outing in October and as crowds gather on the weekends.

Also in October, Harry Potter and friends, played by volunteer actors, come to Northern Lights’ “Dark Forest,” which is served by a tractor and wagon on Fridays and Saturdays.

And if your toddlers claim, “It’s too dark” or, “Dere are monsters,” they can always climb aboard The Hayflower, a massive 100-foot hay replica of the Mayflower ship.

Because the Willamette Valley is Oregon’s fertile crescent, every fall brings a plentiful harvest of pumpkins, Christmas trees and fun for all. Nearby in Junction City, for example, Thistledown Farms and Lone Pine Farms, which are right next door to one another, offer more thrills for young kids (and adults), with an elaborate corn maze, wagon rides, pumpkin patches, amazingly fresh produce, handmade jams and other treats.

On the drive home, the girls are reciting new words they picked up over the weekend: catapult, pumpkin and Renegade. But they both erupt in laughter, repeating “Eugene” like an indulgent secret. --- Kevin Max