I never bought a piece of spirit gear, as it's completely unnecessary to do so. Quest rewards and owl/whale drops will be fine, not to mention copious amounts of dungeon stuff. https://classic.wowhead.com/item=6318/odos-ley-staff was useless to my group because everyone had the https://classic.wowhead.com/item=6505/crescent-staff (you can use this staff as well, and many do, but I elected to get the Wingblade for tanking). I didn't replace it for my spirit set until I picked up https://classic.wowhead.com/item=10826/staff-of-lore from Tanaris (easy quest).

Leveling, I grouped with maybe 2-3 druids for over 50 levels, and none of them wanted the healer druid gear. So I just soaked it up. I'm 53, still holding Spirit gear, and am getting about 200 health / tick with roughly 175 spirit. That plus any bandage over Mageweave and you're back to full health in 10 seconds.

For the record, I wouldn't have stuck with it as long without ItemRack. Making and updating a /equip macro became tedious.