We saw a bit more of Oregon in June, making a trip over to the eastern border, and into Payette, Idaho to meet a guy with a dredge Jim was buying.  This is a fascinating state.

The desert here is much different from what I am used to, and Jim now sees what all the old western writers he used to read, were talking about.  Beautiful horse country.  On this trip we even covered a bit of the old Oregon Trail, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  We took a few photos, but our trip had to be cut short, so we didn't get as many as we hoped to.  You will notice some spectacular storm clouds in most of them; there were thunderstorms all around us on the trip, but luckily they held off in our particular areas until after we arrived.  Instead of staying in the area for five days, we were only there overnight one night, and drove home in the coolness of the next night.  Jim almost melted in the heat, and we've decided to postpone any further trips to the desert for the fall months, when the weather cools off.

We were amazed at the amount of farming being done near Vale, Oregon, which is close to the eastern border of the state.  It is in a pretty little valley, and there are miles of farmland there, in addition to cattle ranches.

The highway follows the Malheur River for quite a ways, through a desert canyon, with spectacular rock formations.  I couldn't get any pics there because there was nowhere to get off the road, but there are huge columns of rocks alongside the road, looking much like old columns built in Egypt by some forgotten civilization, and now crumbling to ruins.

Groups of trees not native to the area are all that remain of homesteads in this area, and there are few people settled in there at this time; there are lots of wide open spaces.

We saw a lot of Elk on this trip, and coyotes, but were unable to get any photos of them.

There will be other opportunities, I am sure.  Even though our trip was cut short, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and the trip.

We don't often drive after dark, but in this case we made an exception, as we were having a problem with the van, and needed to drive in the coolness of the night.  We left Vale at about 9 pm, and started home.  Missy was disconcerted by the dark, and did not like the fact that we had taken her seat to get the dredge to fit into the van.

Then we made a discovery that made the entire trip home uncomfortable for Jim and I.  This dredge had been in Arkansas, and had been stored for a long time.  Unfortunately, when it was handed over to us the hollow tubular frame was full of big, ugly spiders.  Both Jim and I have a "thing" about spiders, and do not like them at all.  As we were driving along I felt a large spider on my hand, and after turning the light on, discovered this strange, and very large and ugly spider.  I finally killed it, but in less than an hour, another was crawling across the windshield.  From then on, Jim and I just crawled, imagining spiders all over the place.  Missy was moving around a lot, and cat hair was flying through the van, so there were a lot of opportunities for us to be concerned about.  After we arrived home and Jim opened the back of the van, another large spider greeted him there, and that did it.  He unloaded everything, fumigated the van, and sprayed all his dredging equipment to make sure we got rid of those spiders! 

We did not arrive home until 4 am, and that is hard on us old folks.  Although I stayed up all night many times when I was younger, and so did Jim, our bodies simply do not recover from it well at all now.  But, in a few days we were ready to go again.

For pictures of the dredge, and our subsequent trip to the Klamath River to use it, see my Klamath River Trip page.

Until next time,

Marcie
June, 2004