Idaho

Idaho, in general, wasn't our cup of tea. It was hot, and there were a lot of bugs. One of the first things we noticed, too, was that everyone watered their lawns. It was mid-August, and everything was green even though it was 100 degrees outside. People were watering their weeds, sidewalks, and in the RV park we stayed at they kept the sprinklers on all night. 

Coming from Washington, where it rains nine months of the year, this was an odd sight for us. It's really common for communities there to restrict water use, and even in the nicest neighborhoods people don't water their lawns in August, but let them dry up. Maybe it's because we all know there that they'll turn back to green in September, or a community value of conservation, or both. 

In Boise there isn't a lot to do downtown, but we did enjoy the paella at the Basque Market. The highlight of this portion of the trip was catching up with a college friend of mine, and then making good time across the state as we headed to Yellowstone.

After Boise we made it through to Pocatello. I was trying to make reservations as we drove, but wasn't having much luck. When I call a RV place I've learned to ask, "Are there any special instructions for getting into this spot?" and then politely decline if it's anything along the lines of "Just move the garbage cans out of the way and you can park there" or "Go past the mobiles and barn . . ."

After checking the regular options, though, I found that their county fairground had RV spots. Score! It was really nice, at the top of the hill with city views, and everything looks pretty at night. =) Also, it was the last day of the county fair, so we walked over just in time to check out the Aztec dancers. 

Then, a nice kid asked us if we were there to sign up for the greased pole climb. To my surprise, our youngest signed up! Then, his sister signed up, too, and they had a great time taking turns with other kids trying to make it to the top. 

Then we stayed and watched the hypnotist show (2Bros Hypno-Show), which was hilarious. It could have been the long drive and the heat, but we were laughing so hard we cried a little. We fell asleep that night to the sounds of bad karaoke coming from the stage, but still got a good night of sleep before our drive to Montana the next day.

John Day Fossil Beds and Kam Wah Chung Museum

Our last day in John Day we spent exploring the fossil beds. We passed through the town of Dayville, which was good for photo ops with their western store front facades. 

Surprisingly, the teenager wasn't into hamming it up for us here.

The painted hills and the Sheep Rock formation are so impressive.

They have a great museum, which we had mostly to ourselves on this hot day. Our littlest naturalist checked out each fossil sample in the many displays, and we all learned a lot about the geology of the area.

Cathedral Rock

Later that afternoon we went to the Kam Wah Chung Museum in John Day, starting out in the visitor center to learn about the Chinese and immigrant worker experience in the area, which peaked during the gold rush era. The store was owned by a resourceful pair, and remained closed from their death and remained untouched for three decades. It was an amazing time capsule of their life and the experiences of immigrants. The kids saw the bullet holes in the door (and currently no minorities in what we'd guess to be a two-hour radius), a stark lesson in racism and its effects. The museum and tour are well done, but we did have a good family talk later on about a few of the comments made by the tour guide. She emphasized that the two men were accepted by the white community, and were the only two Asians buried in the town cemetery. Our family's discussion centered on how accepting the town doctor and business man, but pushing everyone else out of town, isn't really all that accepting at all. What do you think?

Kam Wah Chung Museum

www.oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=5

Ritter Hot Springs

Our first day trip out of John Day was to Ritter Hot Springs. The drive there was amazing--open range fields as far as the eye could see, and driving through towns with one gas station and a post office.

It made us giddy driving through this area, I wanted to see a movie view of us from the air--the lone truck driving down the road.

 

When we got to the hot springs, our 11-year-old did not want to get out of the car. It looked too much like a shack, and she uttered something along the lines of "Dad, seriously. . . no. What, is there a water pipe and a kiddie pool out back?" 

We all thought about the same thing, but put on brave faces. (There have been a lot of times on this trip where we've said, "Come on, this will be fun!" when we really don't have a clue what we're getting ourselves into.)

This is the best angle of the hot springs hotel. We didn't stay there overnight, but it did look like they had a guest or two. 

To say that this place was laid back is an understatement. There was a jar to put your money in to pay, and the hostess (?) was sitting outside on a picnic table writing a letter. (It took a while for that to sink in--there were no cell or internet signals there, so really, letter writing was the only long-range communication option, other than a land line.) If you wanted treats, it was also on the honor system to put your money in the jar. 

There were four hot spring options here. The first was a regular swimming pool that had a hose from the hot spring filling it up. It was nice and warm, and had great canyon views. We had to ignore the algae on the bottom of the pool, but enjoyed having the place to ourselves.

There was also a hot tub, four scary individual (cinder block enclosures) hot tub rooms, and an outdoor shower. The outdoor shower was by far our favorite place. It looked rather creepy at first--like someone ripped out a shower from a mobile home and plonked it down by the river. You had to turn a pipe wrench to get the water flowing, but then it was a strong stream of hot spring water rushing over you as you looked out over the river. I'm glad we had the place to ourselves, as we really enjoyed hogging this up, and would have been sad to have to take more turns.

The outdoor shower is there at the end of the bridge on the right.

As we were showering and having cookies under a big leafy tree, one of the hotel guests pulled the mattress out of her room and flopped it on the wrap-around porch, and took a nap outside with her dog under an old quilt. Perfect day material, right?

John Day

Heading out from Bend we took Hwy 26 east. This was the first time the now-frequently used term 'butt-clenching' (and its variations) were introduced into our family vocabulary. As in, we're cruising happily along out of Bend, then the highway takes a sharp left, and then, oh, we're going straight down another hairpin into Prineville, aren't we?!? Then, safely at the bottom, "Well, that was a butt-clencher, wasn't it everyone?" 

Luckily from there on out the road meandered peacefully through some farms and we were all able to relax and enjoy the drive. 

 As we got closer to the John Day Fossil Beds national monument we wound through the canyons, in awe of the scenery. 

The Sheep Rock.

In these more remote areas it can be a bit tricky to find a good place to camp for the night. Sometimes things are advertised as RV parks, but they are really mobile home parks with mostly full-time residents and tricky parking and navigating. We could technically head to a true campground, too, but in unknown areas we're still not in the 'zone' to drive into an area that we're not sure we can get out of. (We do have roadside assistance, do you think they'd come if we accidentally put our RV in a tent spot and can't get it out?)

We found the John Day fairgrounds (and RV park!), which turned out to be a great place to stay. We were within walking distance of downtown, and the only stoplight in the whole county. (They have a bench there on the corner, so you can do a bit of car watching on a slow evening.) We had deer walk through in the evenings, and the only radio station in the area was on the corner. (The programming kept us on our toes, you start the morning with old-school country, progressing into more pop-ish country, then disco/jazz in the evening.) 

We also had our first laundromat experience, which was fun to do as a team.

She's way cuter than Rachel Green, and way more helpful. =)

East to Bend, OR

From Crater Lake we headed east to Bend, Oregon. On the way there we stopped off at Lava Butte National Monument. We couldn’t fit the RV into the lot for the lava river cave, but were happy enough hiking up the lava butte trail. It was steep and hot, but worth the trek once you get to the top—you can see Mt. Bachelor, the sisters, and the alien landscape the that lava fields make.

That's Lave Butte in the top left corner.

View of Mt. Bachelor and the sisters mountains.

That afternoon we pulled into Bend, and camped behind the Elks lodge. This was a great spot to unhitch so that we could head downtown for some dinner and civilization. (Beer, too, because it’s Bend, right?) 

Speaking of beer, we followed a roving beer bar/bicycle into downtown. Each lady was peddling and it looked like a great time. If there was an empty seat I would have hopped on!

We thought that we’d head out early the next day, but we saw so many cute shops that we came back the next morning when everything was open to do a little shopping. We picked up our anniversary art (instead of gifts, we pick out art together each August; 15 pieces so far!), and the kids had fun looking around Wabi Sabi and What Lola Wants.

The Lone Crow Bungalow had so much cute stuff; being limited on space all we picked up was the book Bike Snob for Joey. He recommends it, but notes it's not appropriate for all audiences. (Or, he's hogging it from his younger siblings, but we'll go with the former.)

 Up next: John Day!

Crater Lake

Since I ended up taking a sabbatical rather than working through this trip, we took advantage of the first few weeks of travel to not worry about how connected we were. We had no idea, though, how off the grid life could be from central Oregon through Wyoming. (At one point, Kevin described it as 'suffocating', but didn't actually display any true signs of withdrawal.) We're in Utah now, in LTE land, so I'm going to catch up on how we got here.

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Our first night of real RV’ing started on 8/8, as we left GP and headed for Diamond Lake. We stayed at the Diamond Lake RV camp as it’s the closest hookup campground to Crater Lake. 

We had a pull-though site at Diamond Lake, and really nice campers next to us. The golf-cart driving workers at the park were manic in their management, though. For example, chasing us through the park when we came back at night because they didn't see our pass, which was clearly hanging in the window. Then the 8am knock on the door because they don't allow clotheslines, and we'd hung a sopping wet dishcloth up outside. Our neighbor there had a good laugh at these antics, though, so it was a bonding experience. 

(I'm happy to report, too, that we haven't met anyone else taking their job this seriously as we continued onward.)

The weather wasn’t really nice enough to enjoy Diamond Lake (damp, damp, damp), but it was just a ten minute drive in the morning to get to Crater Lake. 

The first stop was the pumice desert. Check out these heavy rocks we can lift!

 

The first day was brisk—the gift shops sold a lot of hoodies that morning. We did the visitor’s centers and all of the overlooks on the west and south side. 

We also ventured off of the rim to the Lady of the Lake trail. It was a sweet walk through the forest. 

You know what happens when your 11-year old takes possession of your camera phone on a hike? 

You end up with two hundred pictures of chipmunks in your camera roll.

 

Our second day there we hiked the Cleetwood Cove trail down to the lake. Our lakeside lunch was my favorite part of the visit. We all soaked our feet in the freezing water, and enjoyed the sun breaks. The hike back up to the top of the rim was brutal, mostly because of the flat-footed tourists stomping down the ash trail.  

From there we headed south east, and saw the waterfalls and then went on the pinnacle trail. 

They reminded us of the hoodoos we saw in Banff.

We're so happy that we had the time to spend more than a few moments looking over the rim of the lake--this is a spectacular place.

 

 

Signal Mt

We hiked up Signal Mountain in Grand Teton park today. So beautiful!! Proud of the kids, too, as this is a 7-mile hike.