Things to Do in Albany

At Albany Scuba, a team of aquanautic veterans hosts a variety of diving classes, certification courses, and diving excursions. The team gives students the benefit of one-on-one tutelage, tailoring their instruction to each student's rate of learning and prior experience, from seasoned divers to newbies who've never even had a glass of water dumped on their head before. Beginners are offered a chance to practice in a placid diving pool before taking to the open ocean, and all certified divers are welcome to join the team on regular excursions to nearby lakes and calamari petting zoos.

A USHPA-certified advanced and tandem instructor, John of Oregon Hang Gliding School has taken to the skies on hang gliders since 1990 and taught the sport to newcomers since 1997. He also advises the curriculum for a university engineering program laying out pointers in a systematic way, and discouraging the use of protractors as weapons. Under John’s guidance, students begin with introductory lessons and ground school before advancing along the path to earning individual pilot ratings.

The Oregon Garden gives horticulture habitués the opportunity to fully discover the floral kingdom with more than 20 specialty gardens. The grounds bloom with horticultural rarities and aesthetic scenery, such as a sprawling, 400-year-old signature oak and an alluring collection of miniature conifers. In the Pet Friendly Garden, pups frolic around nontoxic plants, and in the Children's Garden youngsters can explore features such as dinosaur-bone digs and a real hobbit house.

The Oregon Garden also lodges the historic Gordon House, the only Frank Lloyd Wright–designed building in the state and the only one open to the public throughout the Pacific Northwest. The garden's retail nursery furnishes a crib and changing table for baby plants and also cultivates vegetation all year round, selling perennials, shrubs, annuals, and veggies.

HydroSports Dive and Travel’s certified scuba instructors tap into their enthusiasm for all things aquatic to train nascent sea explorers with thorough diving instruction. The staff formulate a roster of classes that includes a wide range of lessons, from basic tutorials that introduce essential skills to advanced courses that yield open-water certification and the ability to recite Keats underwater.

In addition to classes, HydroSports' onsite shop packs an arsenal of equipment from top-quality brands and ample rental gear for self-arranged dives. HydroSports Dive and Travel’s trainers also organize frequent diving excursions amid marine wonderlands such as Palau, Santa Catalina Island, and Poseidon's living room.

At Courthouse Athletic Club’s six locations throughout the Salem area, the cheering of children and the warm pop of tennis balls against rackets fill the air. Stationary cycles, treadmills, basketball courts, and swimming pools help visitors to work toward fitness, train for triathlons, or teach a basketball to swim. Indoor and outdoor courts span the tennis center’s grounds, hosting matches and instruction sessions in both sunny and snow-laden months. Training opportunities are available for children and adults, with private lessons and group sessions covering yoga, Zumba, Pilates, cardio, tennis, basketball, and swimming. Courthouse Athletic Club also hosts children’s movie nights and a dance academy.

Listed in the National Registry of Historic Places, the McDonald Theatre has enjoyed a long, strange history since its establishment in 1925. Originally a community playhouse equipped with both a stage and a screen, the theater found new life in the 1950s when One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest author and psychedelic pioneer Ken Kesey began presenting free cartoons there every Saturday morning. The McDonald spent the next six or so decades as a movie house exclusively, but in 2001, the Kesey family returned, producing concerts and community events under the theater’s enormous proscenium arch. Kesey Enterprises finally purchased the time-weighted stage in 2009, and today the building hosts events ranging from high-school proms to reggae concerts to plumbing-fixture lifting contests.