Oregon
From the 50 State Visitor Guide :
O.R.S. 2021 §§ 163.476; 163A.005 through 163A.235, O.A.R. 257-070-0005 through 257-070-0040, 291-202-0040.
Registration Triggers and Deadlines:
10 days for initial registration and updates; 10 days for a move into the state. §§163A.010 through 163A.020.
State law does not specifically address visitors. Per Oregon SOR response letter (2020), visitors are not required to register, unique among states. However, to be safe, visitors should use the 10 day rule in §163A.020 as a guideline. There appears to be no limit on return visits per month or year.
Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:
Residency restriction: “Sexually violent dangerous” offenders and “predatory sex offenders” may not reside “near locations where children are the primary occupants or users.” O.A.R. 291-202-0040.
Presence restriction: Beginning Jan. 1, 2019, neither “Sexually violent dangerous offenders” nor Level 3 offenders may enter a “premises where persons under 18 years of age regularly congregate,” including schools, childcare centers, and playgrounds. O.R.S. § 163.476
Only Level 3 offenders are placed on the public website. §163A.215
Duration & updates:
Lifetime. Petition to remove – T1 – 5 yrs; §163A.125. Updates annually.
Most recent visits: Aug. & Sept. 2023
I have read enough issues of the NARSOL Digest with state reports from Oregon Voices to know it’s no picnic being on Oregon’s registry. And yet I must also point out that, at least in its treatment of registered visitors, Oregon is one of the least harsh of the states.
State law does not specifically address visitors. In 2020 the Florida Action Committee sent letters to every state SOR office with questions about how their registries affected out-of-state visitors. No surprise – not many states responded to these questions. But Oregon did respond.
According to Oregon’s SOR response letter, visitors are not required to register, unique among states. There is no set number of days visiting registrants can be in Oregon, and no restrictions on return visits per month or year. Despite this, you will notice that in my 50 State Visitors guide (see above) I still recommend that to be safe, visitors should use the 10 day rule in O.R.S. §163A.020 as a guideline.
Oregon does have some residency and presence restrictions, but they apply only to Level 3 and/or so-called “sexually violent dangerous offenders.” If you don’t fit into those categories you’re safe.
First pass through Oregon
On the day I entered Oregon from Washington State my first stop was the impressively named Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. I drove eastward on WA State Road 14 from Vancouver as far as far as U.S. 197, then crossed the Columbia River and returned mostly on I-84 which, sadly, is the main river road on the Oregon side. Because you have a state highway, an Interstate highway and a major rail line all squeezed into this river gorge, and the river itself is a shipping route, I have to tell you it ain’t all that scenic. The setting of the Dalles Dam is nothing if not ugly.
From the Columbia Gorge I headed for Oregon’s famed Pacific seacoast which I followed from Roads End State Park south to South Beach State Park before retiring for the night. As much as Oregon may be in the state government business it’s even more in the state park business. It seems like they’ve turned almost every available scrap of state land into a park, which of course means there’s a fee to get in. The good news is there is one state beach park after another as you travel the seacoast.
On Day 2 I thought I had extra time so I headed inland to see what Oregon’s national forests are like. Unfortunately I ran into a major forest fire, everything was closed including waterfalls and I had to turn back. Returning to the seacoast at Florence, I followed it through Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area and points south.
By the morning of Day 3 I was as far south as Gold Beach, only to discover that the highway I wanted to take inland (U.S. 199) to my reserved campground near Crater Lake National Park was closed due to another forest fire. That left the “Bear Camp Coastal Route” through Siskiyou National Forest as my only option. “Scenic” is one way to describe this mountainous one lane road with occasional turnouts. “Scary” is another. The good news is that most of it is paved.
Crater Lake National Park
Wow, spectacular. Day 4 in Oregon was Crater Lake National Park day. I stopped to see beautiful waterfalls in Umpqua National Forest before entering the park from the north. From that direction the first thing you come to is the main view of the crater. Crater Lake is a volcanic crater, not a meteor crater. From there you can follow a ring road around the crater to see it from many angles before returning to the main view before choosing to leave to the north or south.
Unfortunately the far part of the ring road was closed for maintenance on the day I was there, so I had to turn back at Cloudcap Overlook. One thing I’ve gotten in the habit of doing at national parks is hiking one of the easy nature trails. Most of them are really quite good – after all they’re in national parks. In this case it was Castle Crest Wildflower Trail. Very nice.
The Phantom Ship
By mid-afternoon I was leaving Crater Lake by the south exit. With a few hours on my hands I checked out Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Yes it’s worthy of being a national monument. It was the Saturday night of Labor Day weekend and I had a reserved campsite at Valley of the Rogue State Park which turned out to be a glorified I-5 rest area. Don’t believe me? Go see for yourself.
On my fifth and final (partial) day of my first pass through Oregon I decided to stop at Oregon Caves National Monument. It’s 45 minutes from Cave Junction on U.S. 199 up to the cave, so buy your tickets at the Visitors Center at the junction. Good cave and a good tour. As you walk out the cave exit you’re invited to hike the nature trail, which I did and it’s quite beautiful.
Yes, by this time U.S. 199 was open so I could get to California, but the campground I had reserved there turned out to be closed on account of the fire.
Second pass through Oregon
I was in California for one partial day and three full days before returning to Oregon on what was by now the return leg of my Pacific Northwest Tour. Having spent the night before at Lava Beds National Monument in California near the state line, I entered Oregon this time near Klamath Falls and traveled east on State Road 140 to Lakeview. On my Rand McNally map Lakeview promised a hot spring and a geyser, but like I had already seen on Montana's Flathead Reservation, they were long ago privatized into what is by now some kind of fleabag resort. *Sigh.*
Southeastern Oregon, a.k.a. Oregon’s Outback, is a remote place of stark beauty but most of that beauty is on private ranch lands. Therefore there’s only what you can see from U.S. 395 and few places to pull over and enjoy it. However, after the town small ranch town of Burns there were several campgrounds in Malheur National Forest and they weren’t crowded on a weeknight in September.
On Day 2 of my second pass through Oregon I continued north and east until I reached the tourist town of Baker City. I was hoping to stop at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center but guess what? It’s closed for renovations until 2024! Oh well – I continued east to see what Hells Canyon National Recreation Area is like. And the answer is – yes there’s a lot of recreational opportunities there but the scenery is not as impressive as its name implies. Less impressive than Oregon’s Outback where I’d been the day before.
Because it was Friday night I’d long ago made a reservation at the cheapest motel I could find online in Ontario, OR. That was a good thing too because when I pulled in the “No Vacancy” sign was flashing.
Oregon as a temporary regional base camp
As I mentioned a few posts ago in my Pacific NW Tour Overview, I began to think that if I do this again it would be nice to establish a temporary base somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, break my travel into a few shorter excursions and spend the time in between at a comfortable base camp.
Naturally I would want to do this in a way that won’t require me to register in the state where the base camp is located. That means I’ll need a location that will allow me to come and go 3-4 times over, let’s say, a two month period, staying put for up to a week each time, all without triggering an obligation to register in that state. Then when I report travel at my local sheriff’s department in either Iowa or Florida, I can give them just that one location as my “destination” for the entire trip, while listing in “The Notes” section at the bottom of my sheet all the states I’m planning to visit in my excursions from that destination. With that in my glove compartment I’ll be all set.
In the Pacific Northwest only one state meets all these requirements and that is Oregon, where State law does not specifically address visitors (see my 50 State Visitors Guide). Per an Oregon SOR office letter responding to questions by the Florida Action Committee (2020), visitors are not required to register, unique among states. Registration is required within 10 days for a move into the state, so in my Visitors Guide I recommend not staying any longer than that for any single visit. However there is no limit on return visits, so Oregon law allows me to follow my plan as described above.
After spending a night in the sleepy Oregon border town of Ontario I started thinking that for me at least it would make a good spot for a base camp. The entire Northwest from Montana to the Puget Sound to California is within an easy day’s ride. It’s a “twin city” of Payette in neighboring Idaho, so between those two and a few nearby smaller towns I’d have access to any of my daily needs, not to mention the “relatively cheaper gas” right across the state line. Yet as a temporary Oregonian I’d be covered by the comparatively less restrictive laws there. It all makes sense to me.
It was (partial) Day 3 of my second pass through Oregon when I left for my first foray into Idaho. At day’s end I decided to return to Ontario for a second night to scope out where the cheapest weekly rate for comfortable accommodations might be found there, and came across a nice RV Park near the I-84 exit. Staying an additional night in Ontario added one more partial day to my total stay in Oregon for a total of: First Pass – five days, Second Pass – four days, separated by three days in California. Well within Oregon’s legal requirements.
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