Time to Leave Idaho for more Alaska Connections in Oregon

After a bummer of a day off yesterday, I was certainly ready to hit the road again. It was a cloudy, cool day, as seen in this photo, but no bad weather other than wind in the immediate future. It was a very interesting grey day all the way to Baker City, Oregon. Our destination tonight is outside of La Grande, Oregon where my second cousin and his wife have a small homestead. 

Another scenic day in the western United States. Again, the highway route was along the old Oregon Trail tying me back into 'Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey'. The wagoneers found this calm route between the mountains along the Snake River. When some departed west for Oregon, as we are doing, a camp was set up to be called Farewell Bend. This is now a state recreation area http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_7.php . 

The modern highway 84 leaves the Snake River (above) at Farewell Bend and soon follows what is now the smooth river canyon floor of the Burnt River until Durkee. I say smooth now, because in the time of the pioneers, it was dry and wretched to traverse. Very odd how desert like this landscape is, even along a river (below). Our next stop however was Baker City for lunch. In 2003 when I traveled the west with my Great Uncle Andy, we roamed all over this area because he and his family spent a great deal of time here working in mines. One of his brothers, great uncle Kayo, later settled in Halfway and Pendleton. Presently we are off to see Kayo’s sons Mike and Buck (Buck has also lived in Alaska). 

When I was here with Uncle Andy, we visited Cornucopia, Halfway, Hell’s Canyon, Baker City, Pendleton, and Walla Walla. In Baker City we spent an afternoon in the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center http://www.blm.gov/or/oregontrail/ .  Ken and I will not be visiting today, but I encourage anyone interested in putting a visual image on the life and travel style of the wagon train folks to stop at this center . The structure and design of the museum would be interesting to architects, the interpretive displays are life size, the environmental location is stunning (of course that was not by choice) and there are actual wagon paths still visible on walking trails. 

Today it is much easier to get a meal on the Oregon Trail than back in the 1840’s. We selected the Oregon Trail Restaurant for lunch (what else?!) Every once-in-a-while Ken has a hankering for a big piece of meat and we sure found one here. He had the skillet steak with home fries and was not disappointed. All I remember about my sandwich was  meat and cheese, no veggies at all-really, about what I expected. The service was warm and friendly and that counts for a lot! Plus, there were taxidermy fish of all shapes and sizes on the wall so we could get familiar with a new set. 

We parked on the street very close to the Baker City crossing of the Powder River. This river was another chosen route for Americans making the westward journey. It was also a water source that even my Great Uncle mentioned using while living in the nearby mining towns. Baker is a stalwart of a town, it was a major crossing point for the wagon trains, then a huge center for gold mining, and after the miners left it stayed important by becoming the county seat. There are a lot of good museums here if one is traveling for education or ‘curious.'

Since this is my third major visit to Oregon, I have gotten lots of mileage out of the book 'Oregon for the Curious' by Ralph Friedman, the 1972 edition. I purchased it at a used bookstore in Pendleton on my first trip. The book provides good descriptions of points of interest on most major and minor roads. There are also names of museums, cities, and recreational sites. The most interesting to me are general geological and geographical notes with reference to historic events. I performed a cursory search on the internet for a current version, and it appears the author has written another book instead, “In Search of Western Oregon.” 

Southwest Idaho, Potatoes, Good Friends, and Good Health

We crept into Homedale, Idaho at about 8pm on the 8th after yet another installment of “Where the Heck is my &*&^%# GPS taking me?!” It never helps when it is night and you are not familiar with your surroundings anyway, but to be led by the crazy GPS programming is really nerve-wracking. The Homedale-Parma-Caldwell area of southwest Idaho is basically level farmland. There are a few rises and a picturesque drop off along the banks of the Snake River. Potatoes are king here, elevated to superstar status by J.R. Simplot after he clenched the McDonald’s french fry contract. I didn’t believe it was a real person’s name at first, you know, kind of harkens to Soylent Green. But, there was a real person and he has done great things in the processed food business and for the commerce of Idaho. 

Other large swaths of farmland in this area include alfalfa, mint, onions, vineyards, and sugar beets. Yes, sugar does come from a beet my southern friends. I didn’t believe that one either but after seeing piles and piles of melon sized beets waiting for squeezing, I learned. In the northwest, a great deal of sugar is made from beets, not cane. Interesting what you learn when you get out of your home. 

Back to the GPS issue, all this farmland is usually (or was) divvied up by sections that were rectangular. When roads were dozed, they where constructed around the fields. As farms grew and families expanded their farmland, the road was moved to outline the field. Of course, no farmer wants a road through his property causing him headaches to move equipment back and forth. Farming has been going on in that part of the state for decades. As such, there was a time when cars did not go or were not driven as fast as they are today. So all the circumnavigating of farmland was not as distracting as it is today. We don’t like having to slow down for a 90 degree turn out in the middle of nowhere. 

Which brings me back to our frustration of the evening, its pitch black, no street lights, no malls or convenience store lights to give us any indication of the lay of the land. What came to be a normal 20-30 minute drive from Homedale to the freeway, seemed like two hours that night. Never-the-less, Ken, myself, and the obedient trailer made it safely to our pit stop of the week. 

Our hostess, Beverly, is a bubbly retiree from the office but a squirrelly busy rockhound. I met her and her partner Jake through my Great Uncle Andy while visiting him in Arizona. Jake is an avid rockhound, miner, stone worker. He and Beverly each have several claim leases they mine for agates, jaspers, and other natural wonders. They sell their beautiful rock in bulk for others to work, in slabs, and finely polished for presentation. Picture jasper, Blue lake jasper, Graveyard Point jasper, Morrisonite, Bruneau jasper, mushroom jasper, and many more are some of the stones you could purchase from Jake and Beverly. If you visited the big sales in Quartzite, Arizona in the winters over the past few decades, you would have seen them. 

Much to my surprise on contacting Beverly for a visit, she informed me Jake was in the Veteran’s hospital recuperating from a mild stroke and surgery to remove a brain tumor.  Thank goodness he was doing well, he is a hardy goat of a man and I can’t imagine him being hurt, nevermind that he is a Vietnam vet, a smoker, coffee drinker and wine drinker. Nevermind all that, he gets out in the deserts of Oregon, Idaho, and Arizona to excavate rocks! TONS of them. 

Before we get to our final stop in Homedale, Ken and I stop in Boise to visit Jake in the Veteran’s Rehabilitation center. Its a fine facility and it was a great surprise for him! We had not seen each other since Uncle Andy’s passing in 2006. And Jake was recovering great, he was walking with an aid and cognition was excellent. 

Here is a little bit about Jake’s Graveyard Point Plume agate diggings

http://rockhoundblog.com/rockhound-stories/graveyard-point-plume-agate/

buy some of jake’s picture jasper here 

http://rarerocksandgems.com/

Twin Falls and the Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey

I know, it does not look real does it! It looks like a background painting for a movie! 

By lunch time we were in Twin Falls, a good rest point. Neither Ken nor I had been here before and hadn’t really thought much about the name. To enter Twin Falls, highway 93 is taken south off interstate 84. When we approached the main part of town, 93 took us across the Perrine Bridge over the Snake River. Oh my goodness, what an incredible sight! After coming off the flat lands of the southern Idaho valley and Craters of the Moon area, seeing this 90 degree drop off into a river was breathtaking! 

I had seen the Snake before and already knew it was an amazing geological feature. Seeing it here, far away from Hell’s Canyon, and still being so dramatic reinforced its role as a wild and scenic destination. There is actually Twin Falls as well as Shoshone Falls and Pillar Falls. We did not stay long enough to visit the falls, but the view from the visitor’s center was entertainment enough. 

This makes for a great moment to segway into a book I had been reading on our travels: Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel. Ken and I both kept commenting to each other: ‘Imagine seeing this in a covered wagon’ or ‘How long would it have taken in the prairie schooner to get from Idaho Falls to Twin Falls’ (though these cities may not have been named such at the time) or ‘What did the pioneer do when they came to a sheer cliff such as this?’ Some of these questions are answered in Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey and many other books on the pioneer event in the U.S. However, Women’s Diaries focuses on the migration as recorded by women, wives, fiancees, daughters, and even a few single women. My mother gave me this book many years ago when I was traveling west to Arizona to visit my great Uncle Andy.  I had not read it until now and this was the perfect time! 

In 2003 when my brother, sister, and Uncle Andy traveled to Montana to disperse of my mother’s ashes, we spent a lot of time on some of the Oregon Trail roads. We also spent a lot of time on the Lewis and Clark Trail. Even earlier, on my first drive to Alaska with my sister in 1999, we spent some time on different parts of the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail and even stopped in Guernsey, Wyoming to view wagon ruts http://www.nps.gov/oreg/planyourvisit/site7.htm . In 2007, the first time I drove to see my sister’s new home in Wichita, Kansas, I visited at the Pioneer Woman Museum in Ponca City, Oklahoma http://www.pioneerwomanmuseum.com/ .  All of these locations were now tied together with Women’s Diaries. For those interested in U.S. history, women’s history, mass migrations of people and some reasons why migrations happen, this would be an educational read. 

As seen here in the sunset, most of southern Idaho is flat. This aspect magnified the dramatic effect of the drop into the Snake River. 

We stay the course! Thank goodness our prairie schooner has 220 horses, enclosed climate control,  enclosed gear locker, and GPS (though it could be argued which is better, this or a scout)!