The tiny town of Elgin, Oregon has an unlikely centerpiece: the beautifully restored classical Elgin Opera House. A rural town born of the timber industry, at the bend of the highway leading from La Grande to Joseph, Elgin is tucked in the scenic Indian Valley between the Eagle Cap wilderness and the lovely Blue Mountains. 

Built in 1911, this colonial revival brick theater was uniquely ahead of its time, designed and built for the dual purpose of housing city government offices and a theater.

Exterior architectural features include a decorative metal cornice and pilasters flanking the entrance, and the vintage restored interior boasts a soaring ceiling, great acoustics, plush draperies, box seats, an orchestra pit, elaborate backdrops and rococo decor. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

Honoring tradition, performers have signed the backstage brick walls for over a century. The former jail in the basement serves as costume storage, where barred doors protect suits, gowns and wigs.

After decades as Elgin’s central civic gathering place, it drifted into disrepair. Local forces converged to restore the building in the 1980s, and today the Elgin Opera House brings repeat visitors from as far as Hawaii, California and Idaho to enjoy professionally staged musicals ranging from Oklahoma to Grease to Footloose. This winter, shows include A Christmas Story–the Musical in December and Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat in February.

A four hour drive from Portland brings you to this charming town, where you can follow a night at the theater with fly fishing on the Grande Ronde River, a journey on the Eagle Cap Excursion Train, or a pedal-powered wilderness ride with the Joseph Branch Railriders–or just relax into the quiet pace of an Oregon back road weekend. You may also eat at the cutest Subway franchise this side of the Mississippi.

For a real taste of the vibrant Elgin arts community, plan a trip this month. On October 21 and 22, the Elgin Opera House presents cowboy poetry, followed by dinner and a dance at the Stampede Hall.    

A light breeze tickles my hair as sunlight dazzles on blue water. Arid mountains rise on the horizon, while the boat gently rolls to the husky hum of an outboard motor.

Deep inside me a thrill blossoms: A gray whale materializes just feet from our panga–a small open fishing boat.

At first it’s a glimmer of murky white speckles–a vague, mysterious hint of movement, barely detectable. As she ascends, she transforms: From shadowy indistinct suggestion to a grey-and-white mottled outline, then all dimension and details are revealed as she breaks the surface and takes a breath, water sheeting off her back.

We all gasp as she and her calf drift alongside our vessel and she emits a glittering blast from her blowhole. The spray drifts over us, pungent with a fishy fragrance reflecting her diet of tiny invertebrates–although here in the breeding grounds of Bahia de San Ignacio, she probably doesn’t eat at all. Instead, she nurses her young calf on 50 gallons of milk a day as she helps it master swimming, diving, and making friends with curious humans.

The pair parallel our boat as we motor slowly forward. My heart leaps as mama changes her angle and comes straight for us. She lingers alongside as a half dozen hands reach to pet her. Her skin’s slick and shiny, and has a little give–like a well-inflated wet inner tube. Individual short, bristly hairs emerge from dimples on her enormous lower jaw, and constellations of barnacles and lice are scattered over her body–all harmless.

She rolls over, offering her dappled belly for more stroking before abruptly dropping into roiling waters with a flip of fin and tail.

But they’re not done! Mama and baby hang out. The interest and curiosity are mutual–they approach one side of the panga, engage with us, drop and glide under to emerge on the other side for more caresses. We learn that their eyes are directed downwards, so when they roll away–or spyhop– they are just trying to get a good look at us. Human watching.

90 minutes of whale watching feels like a small miracle. I am forever changed.

Rough and rocky trails, alpine glaciers, star-scattered skies, views that take your imagination hostage and run for miles—that’s Grand Teton National Park.

As the day draws to a close, savvy animal spotters gather by the waterside and wait for elk, wolves, moose and bear to venture near and quench their thirst. Critters abound in this 484-square-mile park–herds of bison graze on the prairie, pronghorn antelope leap through the brush. Study the sky for soaring eagles and osprey, admire jagged peaks mirrored in still water and watch the sinking sun set snow-clad peaks ablaze.

The Grand Teton range is just south of Yellowstone, and suffers a bit from Yellowstone’s metaphorical shadow. Unjustly so—Grand Teton’s landscape has a rugged vertical drama that stands on its own. Peaks nearly 14,000 feet in altitude rise abruptly, improbably, astonishingly, from a wooded plain 7,000 feet below.

The wide Snake River runs calmly through, carrying rafts full of visitors, cameras blazing. Fly fishing is a religion in these parts. Jackson Lake, dotted with islands, extends for 15 miles. The smaller Jenny Lake has a shuttle across, making a hike into the mountains both shorter and sweeter.

Wind the day down at Jackson Lake Lodge, where you can enjoy the view from the deck with a buffalo burger and a local microbrew.

One September, I picked grapes in a tiny village in France. My brother and his wife have a house in Petit Bersac, in the Dordogne. When I heard there would be a vendange–a harvest–I knew I couldn’t miss it.

I’d met Serge and Paulette a few years earlier in Petit Bersac. The oldest couple in the village, they lived traditionally. Serge would bike down the road in his beret to tend to his fields, garden plots and vines dotted around the village. In the backyard they kept rabbits and chickens, and each autumn they made table wine, cognac and pineau to last the year, out of a truckload of assorted grapes. The harvest was celebrated by a feast in their yard for all the volunteers. It was a rare opportunity to be part of a dying tradition.

Sadly, Serge had passed away in the year before this vendange, so his son Guy was in charge of the harvest, the grapes and the crushing while Paulette was, as usual, in charge of the meal.

On harvest day we met at their house, at the table set up for the afternoon feast. 8:00 AM and the menu was red wine, coffee, bread, ham and blood sausage. And cigarettes. I learned that while women were welcome to join the harvest, they did not usually participate in this part of the festivities, but modern ideas prevailed, and I breakfasted there along with my sister-in-law and Guy’s wife and the menfolk.

We walked up the road to the vines in the morning mist. A variety of red and white grapes were planted in rows, strung along thick wires and heavy with fruit. Each picker was issued a pair of rustically rusty, but quite sharp and effective, clippers and a plastic basket or bucket. A few of the sturdier men served as mules, wearing a galvanized metal flat-sided backpack into which all the pickers tipped their bounty.

A democratic acceptance prevailed. When I was spotted trimming off the moldy grapes, I was admonished to just chuck the whole bunch in. Earwigs were ubiquitous and also not worthy of extracting. I did persist in removing slugs, though the veteran harvesters doubtless found that rather precious.

It was a beautiful foggy morning and the vines were a technicolor blaze of red, orange, green and yellow. A special perk was sampling the many varieties as I picked: some honey-sweet, some deep and complex. Eventually our crew of twenty or so pickers had stripped the vines of every grape, filling the tractor-trailer to the brim, so we ambled back into town to watch the grapes be sucked out of the trailer and crushed on their way into an enormous wooden barrel.