Oregon  and  Idaho – Fall  2002

This will not be a regular trip letter with an account of our every activity, but will give you a sense of our recent outing – a car trip to the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho with a lot of bumming around on the way. Another good workout for the new Jeep, which performed fine except for having two flat tires. One difference between this and the usual trip letter is I won’t bore you with what we ate every evening; suffice it to say that we had our black box along and thus did lots of nice bar-be-quing.

Friday-1: Drove to a previously arranged motel at the southern edge of Lassen Park. Did it on back roads after Davis, thus seeing some nice scenery. Especially great was going along the North Fork of the Feather River with excellent canyon views. The motel was nothing special but adequate.

Saturday-1: Tire was flat when we got up in the morning and the only gas station around had no repair capabilities. We changed it, thus learning how on this new car, and then drove 15 miles or so into the park and did a very nice hike (top of Brokeoff Mountain). After that we drove back to the motel and then down to Red Bluff to get the tire repaired. This went extremely well and we were back to a picnic area near the motel for dinner well before dark.

Sunday-1: Drove through Lassen, stopping at view points and taking a modest hike at one of them (Bumpass Hill) where there are several hot springs and boiling mud pots. Then out of the park, around the top, and back into the park to camp at a location near a super perfect cinder cone. Set up camp, hiked the cinder cone, had dinner, and a fine nights sleep. The cinder cone hike was quite tiring since it is steep and like gravel so that you sort of slide back 2 steps for every 3 you take forward; but we made it and it was neat up on top looking into the volcano “hole” as well as having some fine views of a painted desert and huge lava flows.

Monday-1: Stopped at a neat lava tube and walked through it, flashlights in hand. Then drove past Mt Shasta and on to the Kimball’s. The views were not great because of the smoke in the air from the major fires in Western Oregon. Liz, David, and their three kids joined us and we all went a few blocks from the farm to where a new steakhouse was opening up by providing BBQ’d dinners for the neighbors. Oh, yes, another neighborhood family joined us for that meal and then we all went back to Phebe&Keith’s for dessert – apple and raisin pie with ice cream. Full house, good fun, and neat kids all around.

Tuesday-1: Lazed around Ashland, stocking up for continuing the trip, seeing more of the Dunns, and things like that; following by a dinner at P&K’s with the Dunn gang participating.

Wednesday-1: Drove to the Steens, doing a backcountry byway in the process – through Hart National Mountain Antelope Refuge. Didn’t see any antelope but did have some fun encounters with herds of range cattle that would hardly get out of our way on the road. Got to our historic inn in Frenchglen in plenty of time to have anniversary drinks at a picnic table on their lawn before participating in their family style, no options, dinner. A good meatloaf and some pretty good macaroni and cheese. Friendly folks sitting with us at like picnic tables indoors.

Thursday-11: Drove the back country byway that does a loop through the Steens, Lots of spectacular/rugged country. Stopped and did modest walks from a couple of the viewpoints. Saw a small herd of Bighorn Mountain Sheep but they were too far away to see well even with our binoculars. Slept again at the Inn but did our own BBQ dinner that night at a campground/picnic area nearby. Ate rather early and then spent time slowly driving through Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Saw lots of deer and birds, stopping continually to see something of interest with our binoculars.

Friday-2: Did a large almost-loop that went through the Alvord Desert just east of the Steens. Highlight included seeing folks set up to do land sailing, but there wasn’t any wind yet; taking a super hike up into the Steens from “this other side”; checking out some hot springs areas, and having a heavy thunderstorm. Stayed at a motel in Burns, which is almost back to Frenchglen actually.

Saturday-2: Basically did another loop within the same general areas in order to see an extremely neat old Round Barn, a special geological area (Diamond Craters) with a descriptive set of sites to see from various locations, and Glass Butte, which is the largest batch of obsidian in the US and one can gather the stuff at will (not to exceed a car trunk full!). We got some fine pieces. Camped that night out in a park full of sagebrush and had a great sunset followed by a fine sleep during which one could listen to coyotes yelping.

Sunday-2: We were now actually further from Idaho than we had been at Frenchglen. So, headed East and North stopping back in good old Burns for a big breakfast - Dawna’s corn beef hash was better than my scrambled eggs with Basque chorizo; but both were fun and the coffee was endless. A good old truck stop. Lots of scenic driving for the rest of the day and a stop at a relatively large garage sale and a stop or two at junk/antique stores. Only purchased a few items. Also stopped at a narrow-gage train ride spot in honor of Paul, where we took a few pictures, bought a few souvenir items, but didn’t go for a ride. Got to Baker City a bit after lunch, had a fine ice cream cone and then went a few miles out of town to the Oregon Trail Visitor Center. Spent several hours there doing it up properly. Stayed at a motel that night. Of course each time we stayed at a motel after having camped, it gave us a chance to clean up.

Monday-2: Had to decide whether to approach our final destination from the north though forests we’ve never visited (Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness) or the south and decided on the latter. This was primarily so we could go over the Leslie Gulch Succor Creek backroad. We did this a few years ago and it is spectacular so wanted to see it again. Same Great Result. An extra treat was seeing three Bighorn Sheep right next to the road. After that we did another 100 miles of back country roading – the Owyhee Uplands. Some nice canyons and views but not in the spectacular class. Stopped for the night at Bruneau Dunes State Park, set up camp, and had a nice evening meal as the sun set on the sand dunes.

Tuesday-2: Checked out the park some more. Quite a place with a visitor center, the sand dunes, the camping areas and an observatory with a 25 inch reflector telescope. Interesting history how this came about. An amateur astronomy group came here yearly to view the heavens because of the super clear skies and eventually got the state to put up some money for a real observatory. The public can see through it, and through the amateur’s scopes, on weekends – would be fun. Then headed northward towards our final destination; taking some more back roads. Made one wrong choice at a Y and ended up high in the mountains on a dead end road but recovered and got to the cabin in mid afternoon. About half of our 15 person crew was already there and the rest showed up within in the next few hours – two cabins, each with 4 bedrooms.

Wed-Saturday: Five nights in the cabins with four full days to play. Basically, two days were spent doing splendid (11-12 miles and about 1700 foot elevation gains) hikes in absolutely spectacular mountains (the Sawtooths), one being right from our cabin (after a boat shuttle to the end of the lake) and one about 15 miles back down the road; one day of fishing (only Bob caught a couple of modest sized trout but fun, including a bunch of canoeing on a small lake); and one day bumming around the local area. Lots of socializing of course what with a couple of dinners being meals we cooked ourselves and all ate (and drank) together, and one night going to Ketchum (Sun Valley basically) for a restaurant meal.

Saturday-3: Left in mid afternoon so as to not have to do the entire drive home in one day. Since I had 4 days of meetings beginning on Monday I wanted to get home at a “reasonable” time on Sunday. Drove to Elko that afternoon and had a large Basque dinner (but we weren’t hungry enough to take advantage of it).

Sunday-3: To home by 5 PM. The Jeep cruises the interstate nicely at 75 miles per hour and we enjoyed looking at the landscape but didn’t do any side trips. I also did the first draft of this mini trip letter on my laptop while cruising through Nevada just for the heck of it.

Summary: A fun outing. Lots of back roads and neat scenery. Quite enjoyable to drive “around in circles” with time to explore. Good fun being with the old gang again and of course we discussed possible next outings. Rather amazing that every couple there has never been divorced and thus are now on anniversary numbers from 35 to 42! Was also amazing to me that we got 10 out of 15 people to go on one of the 12 miles hikes – not bad for a group whose youngest member is 58.