The Vortex

On Monday, we ventured out of Medford again to visit the Oregon Vortex and House of Mystery!

It's a circle pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and it was super cool to visit. The local Native Americans called it "The Forbidden Place" because their horses and other animals refused to enter it. Even when we were there, the one animal we saw (a bird) flew crooked and into a tree. The magnetic fields going through it basically bend. It's even listed as a no-fly zone, because instruments quit working when a plane flies over it.

The "House of Mystery" was fun. It used to be the miner's house, but one day it decided to tilt,and just kind of stayed that way. They have cables holding it up now, but from like 1920-1980, it stayed this way on it's own...the upper corner is about 20' higher than the opposite corner. It definitely gave me vertigo until our guide suggested that I just find my center of balance instead of leaning on the house.

The view from the inside with me standing straight

It's the place where a broom will stand straight up with no support, which I remembered reading about somewhere. It also shows a bottle rolling uphill, but it's actually an optical illusion...the bottle actually goes downhill, but because of the weird thing the vortex does to height, it appears to be rolling up.

The height thing is really weird. The closer one stands to the center of the vortex, the taller one looks. It's actually measurable in pictures. We're so close in height that it's a little hard to see, but the pictures were taken from center, we're standing on level platforms, and when we switch places, we gain and lose about 2/32" in height. It's much more dramatic to see in person, and it's the weirdest thing.

In the next one, the guide had us kiss...When I'm on the right, I tilted my head down to kiss Ian, and when we switched, I leaned up.

They have letters from Einstein discounting theories the man who starting measuring the effects had...the first one I thought of was that if the magnetic lines bend, maybe it acts like a lens and bends the light, but there was a very thorough explanation for why I was completely wrong.

This girl was on a level platform, and the tape measure being held up is level as well (they held a level up). At the far end, it's level with her eyebrows. As she walks towards the center, she appears taller and the tape measure is next to her nose. It was so spooky to see in person.

Overall, we had a lot of fun, and it was totally worth admission. The weirdest thing we saw, though, was on the map in the gift shop. They have a guest book and world map where people put a pin in where they're from and it gets replaced each March. There was not one, but two pins in Bethel, Ak, and I was tempted to go through the guest book and see if I knew who they were.