Eugene's Saturday Market

We've been talking about taking a trip to Oregon all summer. We went back and forth. Yes - let's take the trip. Never-mind - we can't afford it. Well, maybe if we stretch our budget here....let's go in July. Nope. It'll never work. We can't make it this year. After a whole summer of that, we really thought that it wouldn't work out. But, last week, we decided it was now or never - summer is almost over - let's just go! Wednesday we decided to leave that Friday. Not very much notice, but thankfully, we go on road trips quite a lot, so we figured we could throw the trip together with no problem.

We spent the first day driving. All day. We got kind of a late start. There are always tons of errands that need to be done before going out of town. So, we didn't get to the hotel our first night until 2:30 in the morning. Our kids, of course, got their second wind and it took a few hours to calm them back down and get them to sleep. I really thought we were done for and the rest of the trip would be three tired and crying kids. But, I was way wrong! They always do well on trips, and thankfully, this one was no exception.

Day 2, we stopped in Eugene and went to the Saturday Market. Every trip we've made to Oregon, we've wanted to go, but...it is a Saturday Market and only open on Saturday, so our timing has never quite worked out. But, this time, we actually got to go!

There was live music and entertainment.

Eugene is a really interesting place. If you think the hippie movement ended with the 1980's, you are quite wrong. It never ended. It just moved to Eugene. It is a really different place, but fun to see everything.

The Saturday Market there is HUGE!!!! I thought that there were maybe 250-300 vendors, but I just had to check on the website. The map shows almost 400 spaces, which were all full when we went. That's not counting the adjacent Lane County Farmer's Market, which we didn't even walk through. The Saturday Market estimates that between 3,000 and 5,000 people visit on any given Saturday. Really crowded, but way fun.

Some of my favorite parts were:

All the tie-die! We got each of our kids their very own tie-die shirt.

The soap vendors. I think we saw 5. It was fun to see everyone's different soaps and packaging, and of course talk to them about soap!

The Tarot Card reader with one droopy eye. Pretty scary!

They had tons of cool and way professional looking crafts. They also had some very strange booths - like the prayer booth. Just go in and pray if you like.

But, really my favorite part was probably the food. They had tons of selection! You could eat almost anything you can imagine there! But, of course, the kids picked one of their very favorites - PIZZA!