If you are looking for a special St. Patrick’s Day celebration, take part in the 30th annual “A Wee Bit O’ Ireland” in Heppner, Oregon. Located southwest of Hermiston, Heppner doesn’t look like the Old Country, but the Irish spirit will be alive and well at the March 15-18 event. Enjoy food, drink, music, arts and crafts, sheep dog trials and amateur boxing. “The Gothard Sisters,” a popular Pacific Northwest fiddle and dance trio, will perform Saturday night. Visitors will enjoy the welly toss, the Great Green parade and road bowling.

March 16-17, the town of Lakeview in southern Oregon remembers the history and heritage of its 19th Irish immigrants with the annual Irish Days Festival. Friday evening features a corn beef and cabbage dinner along with traditional Irish step dancing. Saturday will see unique competitions like potato hockey, a bartenders race and outhouse races, along with various food competitions and a parade, music and a barbeque.

Portland Highland Games celebrates its 60th anniversary on July 21, 2012, at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham. The event showcases world-class pipe bands, Celtic entertainment, and top competition in heavy athletics, Highland dancing, solo fiddling, piping and drumming. The kilted mile run, sheepdog demonstrations, caber toss, and parade of massed bands are among traditional favorites. Bring the kids for games, a fun run and a tug-o-war.

Head to the village of Yachats on the central Oregon Coast for the Yachats Celtic Music Festival Nov. 9-11. In its 11th year, the festival features Celtic music from world-class musicians from Ireland, Scotland, Asturias and Galicia as well as dancing, food and spirits. The weekend usually includes whiskey and beer tasting, Irish step dance classes, and fiddle, flute and whistle workshops.

Troy Nave, race start coordinator for the volunteer-run event, says the experience is unforgettable. “At the race start, once the first team starts getting into the harness, they start howling, and pretty soon the entire parking lot at Fergi Ski Area is howling,” he says. “It’s my favorite part of winter!”

Spectators have plenty of opportunities to join in the fun. The streets of Joseph and Enterprise close down for pre-race vet checkups on January 23. Families can meet the mushers and pet the Alaskan and Siberian Huskies.

Watch the exciting race starts from Ferguson Ridge Ski Area, or get a view of the racers in progress from Salt Creek Summit Sno Park. Mushers mingle with the public at a community potluck the night before the race and at the post race banquet.

The athletic undertaking is impressive with routes going deep into the rugged Wallowa Mountains, along the Imnaha River and as far as Twin Lakes. The 200-mile race has an elevation gain and loss of 26,000 feet. “Many mushers describe it as one of the most challenging if not the most challenging mid-distance race in the lower 48,” Nave says. “And the dogs love it. The only really upset sled dogs I’ve seen are the ones who get left in the truck.”

Eagle Cap Extreme Sled Dog Race is the only qualifier for the Yukon Quest and Iditarod in Oregon and one of only five in the mainland U.S. “This is something for our community and Oregon to proud of,” Nave says.

During a transition in her professional life in 2001, she began going home to visit more often. People started telling her stories about her father, Lucky, who had passed away when Trice was 21, and his connection to a tiny logging town called Maxville that once existed near Wallowa.

From 1923 to the early 1930s, Maxville operated as a company town for a Missouri lumber company. Among its households were more than 50 African Americans from southern states who’d been recruited to work in the woods of Wallowa County. Lucky’s family was one of them.

Lucky was 56 when Trice was born. She’d never heard about his life as a young man, which was not only personally interesting, but historically significant. “[The story] is part of rural Oregon that’s so phenomenal. It’s wonderful that this is a part of my history,” Trice says.

Maxville was one of the most culturally diverse Oregon towns of its time — with black and white southern transplants as well as Greek immigrants and white Oregonians. The town saw segregation enforced by the southern company that owned it. It had the only segregated school in Oregon, divided working conditions and even two baseball teams.

Despite all of that, Maxville was a place where cross-cultural friendships flourished. Former residents told Trice how people came together to survive the tough natural environment and bonded because of it. “They had lifelong friendships. They were able to shrug off the constraints of this caste system.”

The story of Maxville captured her heart, especially after national African American historians told her they’d never heard of the role blacks played in American logging. In 2006, she began speaking about Maxville and working to develop the center. (Among other attention, Trice was the subject of a 2009 Oregon Public Broadcasting documentary called “The Logger’s Daughter.”) The Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center received its official nonprofit status in 2010, and Trice is executive director. The center seeks to preserve the rich history Maxville and other similar communities in the Pacific Northwest.

In its temporary home in downtown Wallowa, the center offers a view into the past with displays of artifacts, photos of loggers, horses and equipment, a replica baseball uniform and a map of the town plotted with the houses and the names of the families who lived there. The center will eventually have a permanent home in a nearby former U.S. Forest Service compound built in the 1930s.

You can visit Thursday through Sunday, or take part in the Maxville Annual Gathering, a family-friendly event that celebrates the logging history of Wallowa County, in June.

As for Trice, she continues to garner support for the interpretive center in order to help share the story of Maxville and this unique piece of Oregon history. “It becomes a more rich story and tells us where our culture comes from,” she says. “My culture doesn’t come from the color of my skin. It comes from the place I live and call home.”

Editor’s Note: To lean more about the Oregon’s African American heritage, stop by the Oregon Historical Society’s  All Aboard: Railroading and Portland’s Black Community, an exhibit that focuses on the work and lives of African American railroad workers in Portland in the 1800s to 1940s.

When daylight cracks the horizon, Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Refuge is a marvel! That’s especially true along Foster Flats Road when a bit of sagebrush romance is underway. It is a stunning strutting show as more than two-dozen sage grouse meet on a communal breeding ground called a “lek.”

In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Lake Malheur Reservation, an 81,786-acre preserve and breeding ground for native birds. This designation followed decades of neglect and misuse that included draining and diking historic marshes and heavy cattle grazing that denuded stream banks and eroded soils.

Unrestricted bird hunting–not only by settlers for food but by market hunters who killed egrets, swans, and terns for feathers to adorn women’s finery–decimated the local bird population. Protection for wildlife continued to expand, and by 1940 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge stretched thirty-nine miles in width and extended forty miles in length.

At 187,540 acres, today’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is an oasis in the middle of Oregon’s arid high desert country. It consists of marshes, ponds, meadows, uplands, and alkali flats, diverse habitats that attract a wide variety of bird species that arrive at peak numbers each April through June.

During the spring migration, more than 250,000 ducks–mallards, pintails, teals, redheads, canvasbacks, and ruddy ducks, among others–join more than 100,000 geese and 6,000 sandhill cranes. In the deeper marshes, gulls, terns, ibises, herons, egrets, and cormorants find ideal nesting habitat. The refuge is primarily located in the lush Blitzen River valley, the surrounding sage uplands and basalt rimrocks, and the immense bodies of water that collect the Blitzen’s outflow. I like to begin each visit at the refuge’s visitor center, with its interpretive exhibits and bookshop. The visitor center overlooks Malheur Lake, and the trees and shrubs offer homey habitats to many migrating songbirds each spring.

The adjacent Benson Memorial Museum contains nearly two hundred mounted specimens of local birds in one of the buildings constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s and 1940s. CCC workers constructed the buildings with volcanic rock that was mined from a quarry on the refuge. Head south from the visitor center on the forty-one-mile-long automobile tour route. In about twenty miles, you’ll come to the Buena Vista Overlook, where you’ll find an outstanding view of the Blitzen River valley with towering Steens Mountain as the backdrop.

In addition, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife offers a wealth of wildlife viewing opportunities – many are located in Eastern Oregon including 25 different state managed areas. Water is a magnet to wildlife, and along this route you’ll need to slow down to savor the spring season that’s bursting with birds. You’ll be rewarded with views of migratory waterfowl. Sandhill cranes and shorebird species, as well as songbirds such as warblers, vireos, and tanagers, use the many wetland areas, including Krumbo Reservoir and Benson Point.

The John Scharrf Migratory Bird Festival is held during the first full weekend in April following Easter and offers non-stop birding activities as well as historical and cultural information sure to entertain you and your family. So whether you’re a beginner or a life-long wildlife enthusiast, the Burn’s based festival has something for everyone.

Spend an amazing weekend witnessing the spectacular spring migration in the Harney Basin of Southeast Oregon. View thousands of migratory birds as they rest and feed in the wide-open spaces of Oregon’s high desert. From waterfowl to shorebirds, cranes to raptors, wading birds to songbirds, you’ll see it all!

Editor’s Note: Grant’s Getaways is a production of Travel Oregon brought to you in association with Oregon State Parks, Oregon Dept. of Fish & Wildlife and Oregon State Marine Board. Episodes air Fridays and Saturdays on KGW Newschannel 8 and Saturdays on Northwest Cable News Network.

Inside the casino, I passed a movie theater, multiple eateries and rows of flashing slot machines to an exhibition space with a cooking set reminiscent of the Iron Chef. Cameras and lights, chef contestants and judges and even a celebrity chef, Amadeus — winner of the Food Network’s Extreme Chef Mexican Showdown — were all in place for a professional cooking competition based on the popular Chopped TV show. This annual event had drawn a crowd of culinary students from Walla Walla, chefs from as far away as Spirit Mountain Casino and Chinook Winds Casino, plus a host of excited spectators, including me.

An ice sculpture towered above an array of wild salmon, huckleberries, sassafrass root and yellowfoot mushrooms, some of the native foods that were the basis for the dishes each of the 12 cheftestants would prepare for judging. While the chefs cooked and sweated over their cooking stations, the rest of us ambled through the exhibits of indigenous foods — all available for tasting.

One booth featuring samples of both coastal and mountain huckleberries riveted me. The smaller coastal berries were tarter than those picked on the slopes of Mount Adams. I nibbled on barbecued beef short ribs and pecan tarts. But the best taste of all was right from the pot of one of the cheftestants who prepared a quick-smoked salmon with huckleberry risotto after he’d plated his finished dish. You can’t do that on TV!

On my next trip toward Pendleton, I made a point to stop and eat at Plateau, the panoramic restaurant on the top floor of the casino that features many of these indigenous foods. I stopped at Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, whose permanent exhibits tell the story of local tribes. And, I tell all my friends that Wildhorse, owned by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, is not only a casino, but a resort and a cultural institution that’s worth checking out any chance you get.

Cory Carman grew up in paradise, albeit not the tropical kind. In the shadow of the Wallowa Mountains in northeastern Oregon, she spent her youth riding horses on the family’s 3,500-acre cattle ranch. After college at Stanford, Cory felt the pull of the family farm amid its wide-open spaces and jaw-dropping vistas. She’s now the fourth generation to oversee the ranch, which supplies grass-fed beef to many of Oregon’s top chefs. Here is Cory’s Trail to Feast for her stomping grounds. This trip takes you from Bend to Baker City to Joseph.

Start your day:
Before hitting the road in Bend, grab a Fair Trade Certified coffee and a breakfast burrito at Strictly Organic Coffee.

Grab your camera:
Four miles east of Prairie City on the Journey Through Time Scenic Byway, a big Conestoga wagon commemorates the Oregon Trail and marks a viewpoint into the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness.

Unique sleeps:
Revisit the service and style of 1889 without giving up creature comforts at the Geiser Grand Hotel, a National Historic Landmark in Baker City.

Meet the maker:
Stop by Stein Distillery on Main Street in the picture book town of Joseph to sample their excellent handcrafted spirits made onsite with locally grown grains in a magnificent copper still.

A treat worth the drive:
A dark chocolate mocha from Arrowhead Chocolates in Joseph will help fuel your explorations, and don’t forget some salted caramels for the road.

You’ve gotta see this:
Watch 10,000 years of Native American history come to life through exhibits, storytelling and dance at the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute Museum, 10 miles east of Pendleton.

Can’t-miss dinner:
Order the Pit Boss burger made with local grass-fed beef, bacon and barbeque sauce to go with one of the eight rotating handcrafted beers on tap at Pendleton’s best brewery and pub, The Prodigal Son.

Want some inspiration to help create your own tasty trail? Download our Trails To Feast booklet featuring seven culinary paths throughout Oregon.