Silver Falls State Park is located 30min east of Salem. This large state park boasts 10 beautiful waterfalls. We hiked the trail to North Falls (136 ft) this beautiful waterfall has a amphitheater-like surrounding where you can walk behind the falls
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Bush's Pasture Park as it is called is located in Salem, Oregon. The land on which the park resides was once owned by Mr. Asahel Bush a pioneer who built his home here in 1877.
A.C. Gilbert was born in Salem, OR on February 15th, 1884. Today, his uncle's Victorian home, the A.C. Gilbert House, is one of three structures that house our museum's exhibits. A display of vintage Gilbert toys and inventions along with an exhibit chronicling his exciting life is located in the Parrish House. At the end of his life, A.C. Gilbert held 150 patents for his inventions. This creative genius that believed that "playing is essential to learning," serves as a wonderful inspiration and namesake for our hands-on, interactive museum.
After graduating from Yale with a degree in medicine and earning an Olympic gold medal in the pole vault, A.C. Gilbert created the Erector Set, an engineering toy that enabled a young child to build such items as Ferris wheels and bridges. He later marketed a variety of other educational toys ranging from American Flyer trains to Mysto Magic sets, chemistry and telegraph sets. With his toys, Gilbert hoped to combine fun with an understanding and appreciation of science. Gilbert realized that a child needed playthings that would encourage creative expression and satisfy a natural curiosity about the world. Source
"You may never see your friends or family again. You must build your own house. You must grow your own food and make your own clothes. You are sick most of the time. And somehow, you must explain "salvation" to people who don't speak your language. You are an Oregon missionary." "Life at the Willamette Mission was always difficult, but during the first two years it was little more than a struggle for survival. The first arrivals- five men who came to preach and teach - instead spent nearly all their waking hours acting as farmers, cooks, carpenters, seamstresses, housekeep and nurses. They took in as many as 30 Indian children. Every child needed food that had to be grown, clothing that had to be patched together, and a bed that had to be built." 
Thanksgiving dinner 1837: "Stewed peas, fried bread and pea coffee" "Illness and death were constant companions. Tuberculosis was rampant. New missionaries contracted malaria almost as soon as they arrived, leaving them weak or bedridden for days at a time. A child, laughing and playing one week, might suddenly die the next. When Jason lee left Oregon after ten years of tremendous effort, he left behind the graves of two wives and an infant son. Lee himself was mortally ill, and died less than a year after his return east. He was 41." "Additional help, including woman, started arriving from the East in 1837. In it’s final years the mission included farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths a cabinetmaker and more teachers, as well as wives and children. By then, the original building was surrounded by fields, barns workshops, houses and nearly everything needed for a self-sustaining community." "Jason lee had selected a poor site. Clouds of mosquitoes, a lack of water power, and the eroding riverbank made it clear that the mission must move. (Mission Lake at the time, was a channel) of the Willamette River) After they were abandoned in 1841, the buildings quickly rotted away. Only the fields remain." "In 1844 the Methodist dream was abandoned. The Willamette Mission – then in Salem – was closed, replaced by Churches and circuit riders to serve the white settlers. Ten years later, the few remaining Indians, improvished and dejected, were forced onto the Grand Ronde Reservation." 
"Even though their mission failed, the missionaries laid the foundation for the Oregon we know today. Their reports and letters encouraged large numbers of Americans to move west. They pushed for an American – style government- the first government in the Northwest – and held prominent political positions. Their “Oregon Institute” became Willamette University, and their Chemeketa community became Salem, Oregon’s capital” Source: Williamte Mission Site I encourage you to go and look around the Mission site which is now a beautiful park. We owe a debt of gratitude to the men and woman who braved the wild frontier all for the sake of the Gospel that it may be as it is now "the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes" Romans 1: 16
The Sisters Rodeo Sisters, Oregon::
A beautiful Garden in Silverton Oregon, where you can see hundreds of varieties of plants and flowers.
"Willamette Mission is one of the most significant and beautiful historic sites in the Willamette Valley. The park occupies land where the first mission for American Indians was founded in 1834 by the Reverend Jason Lee. Members of the Methodist Mission were later active in the formation of Oregon government. A monument is located in the park providing information on this settlement. A landing for the Wheatland Ferry -- the first to carry the covered wagon across the Willamette River in 1844 -- is in the park." Oregon Parks
