A few Fridays ago I ended my workday early so I could take my daughter out for a few hours on the Hood River Fruit Loop. It was the last official day of summer before fall equinox and a bright, picture-perfect day with fluffy clouds and temperatures in the mid 70s.

The Hood River County Fruit Loop, located in northern Oregon along the Columbia River, is enormously popular, especially during fall fruit season. There are apples, pears, pumpkins, wine grapes, Italian plums, and a few other crops being harvested at this time. Tour busses and large groups descend upon this agricultural region en masse, especially on the weekends. So we snuck out on a Friday afternoon to get a taste without the huge crowds and limited parking. The Fruit Loop has 28 different members who have farm stands or tasting rooms open at different times of the year, some of them year-round. They band together to do group marketing and produce a colorful map that can be found all around the region. It is a model of cooperative agritourism, one that could easily be adopted in other agriculturally rich and beautiful regions of the country.

Continue Reading...