The Willamette Not-Valley

8There's a difference in tone and atmosphere between the part of the Willamette Valley around Portland and the rest of it.

Oregon's Willamette Valley is mostly broad and rolling, with undulating areas of hills and rural farmland that seem to go on forever, and then the foothills of the Coast Range and Cascades happen. As the river bends east before going north again, at Newberg Pool (they actually call it this), it's sinuosity is constrained by hills on each side. As Hwy 99E hugs the river from Canby north into Oregon City, it seems a different place entirely, still Oregon but somehow in a different state entirely.

It's in the Willamette drainage, but, somehow, it's not part of the Willamette Valley. Not really.

As seen from I-205 southbound in West Linn

I mean, I'm not Philip Jose Farmer, but if I were, this would inspire me to write Riverworld. 

Maybe that this is the oldest part of the community we modernly call the State of Oregon, maybe that has something to do with it.