Over twenty five years ago, my wife and I quit our jobs, packed up a ‘74 VW Westphalia pop-top camper and headed out in search of a new place to call home. Determined to live on a lake we made special stops in Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” the 1000 Lakes region of NewYork/Canada and tracked down the lake On Golden Pond was filmed on –Squam Lake in New Hampshire. As beautiful as these places were, they were too far away from family for us to seriously consider a change of address. Returning to California, we spent three months living at Bass Lake, outside of Yosemite, but realized it was too isolated to be a realistic year-round home base.

Then my brother-in-law invited us up to visit his new home in Lake Oswego, Oregon. It was love at first sight. I recall driving by the Lake Grove Swim Park filled with picnicking families and kids jumping off docks into the water and envying people who actually lived here. Soon we counted ourselves among them. Our first impressions did not lie.

The family that boats together stays together

We bought a house on one of the canals leading to the lake and started a family of three kids who grew up to be lake rats. Summers of boating, tubing, skiing and swimming in the lake made summer our favorite season here but we have found lots of reasons to be grateful we call Lake Oswego home. I hope to share many of those reasons with you through the course of this blog. If you’re thinking about moving here, hopefully my personal insights, as well as those of neighbors and friends, will help you decide whether Lake Oswego is a fit. If you’re already lucky enough to call Lake Oswego home, perhaps these “Reasons to Love Lake Oswego” will remind you of how blessed you really are while helping you discover some gems you may have missed. Keep checking back—I’ll update weekly giving you 52 Reasons to Love Lake Oswego.