Swinging in Silverton

We no sooner got back to Oregon and we found ourselves off to our local Classic RV club's 1st camping outing of the season. This is such a great group of RV'ers and we always enjoy our time with this group. We were all invited to Silverton, OR to have a "Swinging Good Time" and that we did. The weekend was filled with seeing old friends, informative guided tours, delicious food, great dancing, competitive games and lots of fun! Our tours included the towns of Mt. Angel and Silverton, which are both rich in history. Mt. Angel's St. Mary's Church stands as a testament to those artists who wanted to depict the story of Christ within the beautiful stained glass windows. The man guiding our tour had been doing so for 20 years and therefore was able to not only give us historical facts, but also several side stories that proved very interesting to us. Then he expanded his tour to included the Glockenspiel complex and even more stories about the German heritage of Mt. Angel. Each year in September Mt. Angel is host to one of the largest Oktoberfest in the Northwest and a must attend for those in the area during this time.

We did another guided tour on Saturday of the locally painted murals of downtown Silverton. Each mural has been painted by a local artist and reveals a fascinating story that relates to the town's history. One of the murals depicts a hometown astronaut, Don Pettit. We found this to be an interesting coincidence, because his last ascent into space was on November 14, 2008 and we just happened to be there in FL to view that launch and now we were in Silverton to view the tribute to him via a descriptive mural. Kinda cool don't you think?

Our next guided tour was of the Oregon Gardens, again history, stories and a chance to view creative artists who happen to "paint" their creations with flowers, plants and innovative landscaping.
Saturday night was "Swing Night". It was a 50's atmosphere, with 45's records & LP's everywhere, a coney island & root beer float dinner, swing dancing demonstrations and the much anticipated "Unique Sock Contest"!

What an array of socks were on display by members. There was a prize for the gals--and one for the guys. Guess who won--yep, Frank with his more than cute Doggie Socks.
After the judging was completed it was on to the dancing. We had a ball, rock'n'rollin, swinging and sometimes even dancing. These guys really gave the rest of us a truly great time!!!