Oregon Country Fair

July 10, 2010

The Oregon Country Fair was an earth-shattering, mind-blowing, life-altering event. I'm sure it was a fantastic event before the local politicians got involved. Unfortunately politicians make poor party planners. The Oregon Country Fair is an old Hippy Festival. It has a reputation for being a wild party with lots of topless women. That was before the Eugene city got involved. In order to keep the festival alive they had to ban alcohol and drug use. Which begs the question how do you have a hippy festival without marijuana?

Drug and alcohol wasn't really important to us as we probably would not have had more than a beer at the event. However, sometimes at an event like this people have to loosen up a little for it to be fun. They still allow women to go topless. However, there were probably 10,000 people there the day we visited and maybe 10 topless women. Vicki went body painted assuming she would fit right in however, except for a few pictures she kept her breasts covered.

The Oregon Country fair does have a number of good music and theater acts. It's also a big food festival. It was good much better than county fair corn dogs. This is a huge event attracting 10,000 people every day. Even if you arrive early you'll be parking a mile away from the fair. It's either dry and dusty or wet and muddy! 2010 was very nice weather wise. However, from what we understand 2009 was very wet and muddy!

There apparently a great party at the fair, but you can't get an invitation to the fun party. At 7 PM everyone except for the people who work there picking up garbage all day have to leave. In order to be able to pick up garbage you have to know someone, and it's very difficult to get on the preferred list. The rumor is that after 7 the real party starts and that it's a lot of fun. However, I can't confirm that rumor as we were not invited!

Our recommendation is if you are looking for a food event with music and skits for the entire family and you happen to be in the neighborhood then check out the Oregon Country Fair. 10,000 people are there every day so a lot of people think it's a great event. We are not unhappy that we visited the fair, but I doubt that we'd go again unless we were invited to the fun part of the fair that takes place at night.

Click here for a video clip of the Oregon Country Fair