Growing up in Kentucky, I took field trips to both Abe Lincoln’s birthplace in Hodgenville and his boyhood home, just over the Ohio River in Indiana. My elementary school was a few blocks from the gravesite of Zachary Taylor, and a road trip in most any direction was sure to pass a few stately presidential homes or final resting places. In the eastern US, there are presidential sites everywhere.

Out here? There was, uh, that one time FDR came to Oregon to dedicate Timberline Lodge. Sen. Wayne Morse sort of ran for president in 1960. A Portland hotel was the site of some alleged bad behavior by Al Gore (not a president, but he did win the popular vote). Visits and almosts. We’re more associated with protesting presidents than with actual presidents. So when I eye places of interest along a new-to-me wine country bus route (because I don’t think I can go to wineries all day—I’d just fall asleep), I’m surprised to see the boyhood home of Herbert Hoover, the actual 31st president of these United States. My destination is set.

Since the Hoover-Minthorn House in downtown Newberg is open only a few hours a week (currently 1–4pm Thursday–Sunday), I have plenty of time to explore more of Yamhill County Transit’s Route 44/44X, which runs Monday–Friday between Tigard and McMinnville. While its schedule is geared to the city-bound nine-to-five commuter, the fareless service works for the day-tripping Portlander, as well, connecting to TriMet’s 12 line, the WES train, and a handful of other routes at the Tigard Transit Center. The 44 would make a great designated driver for a weekday wine tour, and there’s even a stop at the Vintages Trailer Resort in Dayton for an overnight.

From downtown Portland, the 12 follows Barbur until it turns into the Pacific Highway, taking me on a mini-tour of Southwest: the classic ’40s-era Capitol Hill Motel sign, Pacific Typewriters, a scuba center, a bar advertising a bingo fundraiser for Ida B. Wells High, a Revolutionary War statue I’ve never noticed from my car, and an automotive repair shop with a message board declaring “Hate creates a lot of problems. It never solves them.” As we approach the end of the line, I see that Blazing Saddles is playing at the Joy Cinema.

I have about 20 minutes before the Yamhill County bus comes at 8:44am, which is just enough time to grab a cup of joe and some chocolate pumpkin bread at Symposium Coffee, whose back hallway hosts a chamber of commerce visitors center and a restroom. I’m relieved the shop a block away called NW Accent isn’t open yet, since I’m an easy mark for its “You’re not sad! You just need a new HOODIE” sign and I don’t really want to carry around a bulky new hoodie all day.

As the 44 traverses Tigard, the recorded stop announcements pronounce the town name like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh and the driver has a cat bus pin from My Neighbor Totoro on his cap, so I’m a little bummed that the bus stays on the road as opposed to bouncing or flying down 99. I pass Sherwood and Newberg and then hop off in Dundee around 9:30 to head to Red Hills Market for breakfast. As I settle in with a refillable mug of Proud Mary coffee and citrusy avocado toast topped with radishes, pumpkin seeds, and Willamette Valley–milled Durant olive oil, I start planning out a return trip next winter for holiday shopping. Between the wine and cheese selections, kitchenware, cookbooks, sassy bird sticker collections, mahjong guides, butter-themed notebooks, and a “piglets” section with toys, games, and kids’ books, I think I could knock out my whole list here—and it would be an excuse to try more of the menu, sit outside by the firepit, or just take in the wonderful smells emanating from the kitchen.

After breakfast, I take a stroll up to the Dundee Scenic Overlook, passing the Dundee Hills Estates mobile home park on the way. Everything around here sounds like the name of a vineyard. Coming back down the hill, I visit Falcon Crest Park, which shares its name with one of those cliffhanger-and-coma evening soaps that ruled the early ’80s. This one was set at a California vineyard and starred Jane Wyman, whose third husband was Ronald Reagan, so I decide to count this cute little park and playground as another loose presidential connection for Oregon.

Returning to the main drag, I pass tasting room after tasting room just opening for the day: Purple Hands, La Biblioteca, Open Claim…. The sidewalk peters out and I have to walk on the highway shoulder to make it to the southernmost tasting room, Day Wines. When I reach this turnaround point, it’s almost noon, so I feel OK settling in for a $25, five-wine flight that takes me from a tropical and beachy white (the 2023 Isla Vermentino) to a red blend I’m told is not named after a Police song (the 2022 Wrapped Around Your Finger) to a rich pinot noir sourced from McMinnville’s Momtazi Vineyard. While the details that the Day staffer shares of barrels and clusters and skin thickness are lost on me—a beer person—the wines are distinctive and memorable, and maybe sometime when I wouldn’t have to carry it around all day I’ll come back and buy a bottle.

The bus stop that will get me to Newberg is a 15-minute walk north from Day Wines, past the Dundee location of location chain La Sierra Mexican Grill, where fake greenery lines the walls behind a shrine to the Virgin Mary and a selfie-ready “good vibes only” velvet love seat. I also stick my head into Lumpy’s Tavern, where the bar TV informs me that a 16 seed is currently 11 points up on a 1 seed in the first round of men’s March Madness. After a five-minute bus ride, I land in downtown Newberg and head for the nearest sports bar, Old Town. Sure, I’m in town to go to a museum, but I can learn about presidential history after I watch a potential historic upset and eat a hanging pretzel that smells like it’s been dipped in butter.

Alas, the no. 16 Siena Saints can’t hold their momentum in the second half, and they end up falling to the top-ranked Duke Blue Devils. Herbert Hoover’s alma mater, Stanford, hasn’t made it to men’s March Madness in over a decade, though its women’s team is a powerhouse and won the whole shebang in 2021. Neither team existed yet, and basketball itself was just being “invented,” when Hoover arrived at the brand-new university in 1891 to study geology. That’s where he met fellow geology student Lou Henry, his future wife, with whom he sometimes spoke Chinese after they ended up working in the mining industry there during the Boxer Rebellion, and who would later be head of the Girl Scouts and help formalize its cookie sales…. These are among the many things I learn after I’ve paid $7.50 for admission at the Hoover-Minthorn House, a humble abode just off Highway 99 at the corner of S River and Second Streets.

I admit that all I really knew about Hoover before this trip was that he came between Silent Cal and FDR; that he wasn’t part of the vacuum family; that he was no match for the oncoming freight train that was the Great Depression, which hit in 1929, his first year in the White House; and that he’s the namesake of Hoovervilles, the nickname for the era’s homeless encampments and shanty towns. My excellent tour guide, who’s originally from Sherwood and is studying history at Oregon State, lets me know Hoover was our last orphaned president, having lost his dad to a heart attack and his mom to typhoid. In 1885, at age 11, he was sent west to live with an uncle, John Minthorn, in this house.

Young Hoover caught trout and crawdads and did chores while his girl cousins made pear butter in the yard, and he once had a job picking potato bugs off crops, earning a penny per bug. Historical artifacts include Hoover’s bed (the original quilt was ruined when a cat snuck in and had a litter of kittens on it in the 1970s), his old fishing gear, period kitchen items like butter molds and a cool flipping waffle iron, a pie safe, and a comfy chair his uncle never let him sit in. When he came to Newberg for the house’s dedication as a museum, held in 1955 on his 81st birthday, he finally got to sit in it.

After my tour, I walk through the, um, Herbert Hoover Disc Golf Course (if he was too early for basketball he was definitely too early for disc golf) and along a residential street to reach the Friends Cemetery, which holds another Oregon brush with the presidency: the grave of James Lewelling, the last surviving member of an honor guard that stood watch over Abraham Lincoln’s body. Like Hoover and Minthorn, Lewelling was one of many Midwestern Quakers who ended up in Oregon. He was also a much younger half-brother of Henderson Luelling, who brought 700 fruit trees across the country to the Willamette Valley before he bolted in an attempt to launch a sex cult in Honduras, and Seth Lewelling, who bought out Henderson and took over the orchard that would develop the Bing cherry.

I’m catching the express 44X on the way home, which makes fewer stops than the regular 44, so I have to make sure I’m at the right one. There’s just enough time to poke my head into a few shops: In the run-up to Easter, gift store Pulp and Circumstance has a basket of plush bunnies standing guard over its greeting cards and candy and rock-and-roll wall hangings, ARK Pet Rescue has an actual bunny sharing space with several adoptable cats, and Velour Vintage & Heritage has no bunnies but does have some nice wool watch caps and well-worn-in jeans. Newberg’s Carnegie Library features a mellow quiet zone upstairs and a bustling children’s section downstairs. There are some books about the hometown president here, and maybe one day I’ll sit down with some of them. I’m on a roll, having woken up knowing only four things about the 31st president and now knowing at least 40. But at the moment, my midday wine flight and cemetery trek are catching up with me, and I’m ready to relax on the bus ride home.