Central & Southeast

(This post covers Sept. 18-23)

We’ve turned the corner and our rig is now pointed southeast. It’s time to go home.

However, it was not quite yet time to leave Oregon-yet.

From Ft. Stevens State Park in the extreme northwest corner of the state we traveled a diagonal line southeast across the state before exiting into Nevada around noon on Sept. 23; 38 days after we arrived in the state.

Our final days here were a great reminder of this state’s geographic, climatic and demographic diversity.

To get from Ft. Stevens to our one-night stopover in Bend (not an accident, we like Bend) we had to cross two mountain ranges and drive through Portland, a city that does not go out of its way to encourage driving, much less driving through. After some debate and discussion we decided to take U.S. 26 more or less right through the heart of Portland and then skirt the base of Mt. Hood. It wasn’t too bad.

Just a few miles east of Mt. Hood, on the eastern slope of the Cascades, the clouds and gloom that had enveloped us for at least the last 10 days evaporated and we were soon bathed in welcome sunshine and blue skies, the first we had seen in more than a week.

The weather wasn’t the only change. We were now back in sparsely-populated “rollover” country; and it will be more than a thousand miles, somewhere in Colorado, before we reach a county that did not vote overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.

Indeed, the West Coast is now in the rearview mirror.

We spent one night at a state park on the outskirts of Bend where we enjoyed good beer and good food at 10-Barrel Brewing, and got the oil changed at the local Ford dealership.

On Thursday we moved on to a lovely, quiet state park near the town of John Day about 150 miles east of Bend.

This area of central Oregon is a geologist’s heaven. For eons periodic eruptions from the Cascade volcanoes to the west coated this area of central Oregon in ash, entombing the plants and animals of each time period. These ash tombs built up, layer upon layer. As the Cascades rose ever higher to the west, and the seas receded, the John Day area to the east of the mountains became a desert. Erosion followed. The John Day River cut deep canyons through all of those layers of ash that had turned into sedimentary rock, and the fossils of all of those entombed plants and animals were revealed like a gigantic time capsule.

When gold was discovered along the John Day River in the 1860s miners flooded in and started digging. They found some gold but they also found fossils – lots of fossils. A minister in The Dalles with an interest in geology heard about these fossils and he came to the area to explore.

The minister began corresponding with geologists in the eastern universities and, by the late 19^th century the scientific community had begun to understand that the John Day area of central Oregon is one of the largest, richest, most-diverse and best-preserved fossil beds in the world.

We spent the day Friday exploring and hiking in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (the 14^th NPS site we have visited since leaving Texas; seven of them national monuments). We have only the most rudimentary appreciation for geology but we do have an eye for pretty landscapes and the “painted hills” of the John Day area are definitely unique and beautiful with multiple shades of green and red.

At this point in the story blog readers may be asking themselves (because we certainly did); who in the *@!# is John Day?

What could this guy possibly have done to deserve having (at least) three towns, two rivers, a huge dam on the Columbia River, a national monument, a geologic strata and a prehistoric tiger named for him (to name just a few)?

It seems implausible, but here’s the story.

Day was a trapper working for Astor and came to the Oregon Territory just a few years after Lewis and Clark. Sometime around 1810 he and another trapper were robbed and stripped naked by Indians at the mouth of a large but unnamed river that empties into the Columbia River near The Dalles.

Day survived the ordeal and made his way down the Columbia to Ft. Astoria where he was later assigned to return with a group of trappers to St. Louis. However, along the way he was left behind on the lower Columbia where it is said that he went mad.

Apparently the story of John Day’s ordeal became something of a legend and the river in Oregon that empties into the Columbia where he was robbed began to be called the John Day River.

The name stuck and it turns out that this river drains a huge swath of central Oregon, including those aforementioned fossil beds.

The rest, as they say, is history; though it doesn’t explain why a second river in Oregon and an unincorporated village, both near Astoria, are also named John Day. Incredibly, Day was with a group of trappers in Idaho when he died in 1820 and they named a river for him there that has only recently been renamed.

Before we headed south from the city of John Day on Saturday we stopped to take a tour of the Kam Wah Chung state historic site.

The story here is that thousands of Chinese came to the area in the 1860s to work in the gold mines. They were mercilessly abused and most of them left the area but two stayed to provide “Chinese medicine” and general mercantile services in a mostly Anglo community of ranchers. They prospered and lived out their lives and are buried in John Day.

When the last one died in 1952 the store/apothecary/house was boarded up and closed and no one went inside for nearly two decades. When they did open the building they found the contents extraordinarily well-preserved by thick walls and dry air, sort of like a time capsule.

 

The state took it over as an historic site and it is now used to tell the story of 19^th Century Chinese immigrants in Oregon.

By mid-afternoon we had reached a remote area known in southeast Oregon known as The Narrows and decided to stop at nice “RV Resort” where we could do laundry. It was a good decision because it soon began to rain. Later, however, the rain stopped and we were treated to a rainbow and an awesome sunset. The third photo is a sunrise.

In an incredible stroke of good fortune the limited cable service at the “resort” included CBS and CBS happened to be carrying the Texans game against Baltimore and the next day happened to be Sunday. After the Ravens beat Houston we headed out for a tour of the area which includes a wildlife refuge and historic sites related to the area’s ranching past.

The views were incredible in the clear, clean air looking out over flat sagebrush-covered plains with (fresh) snow-capped mountains (The Steens) in the distance. One of our stops was an historic round barn built in the 1880s by a rancher so he could train horses in the winter. It was in incredibly good shape.

At the end of the day we stopped at a local hot spring for a soak.

From The Narrows we drove south to Fields for a famous burger and shake…and, a few minutes later, we were in Nevada.

Before letting Oregon go I would be remiss if I did not mention some of the state’s quirks.

One of the really nice quirks is no sales tax. It is so pleasantly strange when something costs $11 and you pull out $11 and hand it to the clerk she hands you your stuff. No digging for change. No annoying pennies.

Another quirk that I’m not entirely sure I like, but not entirely sure I don’t, is gas station attendants. You cannot pump your own gas in Oregon. Every station has attendants on duty. You don't even have to get out of the car. I think New Jersey is the only other state with a similar law.

Occasionally an attendant will wash the windows, but usually not. Less than half appear to be homeless and/or out on parole. It seems to me that the gas stations are more orderly and cleaner as a result. Occasionally it has taken maybe a bit longer than it would pumping my own gas, but generally speaking the attendants are prompt, efficient and well-mannered.

Another Oregon quirk is one-word road warnings signs. Reticence is clearly a virtue at ODOT. A favorite warning of ODOT sign makers is “Congestion”. I had to laugh when we were driving here in Southeast Oregon in the last few days – where you can easily drive for 15 minutes without seeing another car or house or human – and in the middle of nowhere there was a sign that said simply “congestion”. Another of ODOT’s one-word favorites is “Rocks”. "Elk" is another. Speed limit signs dispense with the word limit and simply say; “Speed 55”.

Goodbye Oregon. Our expectations were sky high; and you met them.