Fort Hall, Bonneville Point, Boise, National Historical Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, Pendleton Roundup, Whitman Mission, Deschutes River

(posted from Shari’s Restaurant, The Dalles, OR)
(This post covers 15- 20 September, 2009)

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Sunday, 20 September-

We awoke refreshed and surprised at how nice and quiet our night had been in the casino parking lot. The main part of the lot was jammed full and we had to run back and forth a few times in the open lot area to find a place to park little Mocha Joe. With all the giant diesel-pusher RVs we expected to be hearing their generators running all night. A few were running when we went to bed around 2200 but soon quieted down and the expected hub-bub from the late crowd returning to their RVs never materialized.
We drove north from the Wildhorse casino and across the state line into Washington state at Walla Walla.
Our goal today was the Whitman Mission. It was here that Marcus and Narcissa Whitman came to minister to the Cayuse Indians. Their mission lasted 11 hard years and the Whitmans appeared to realize their mission of bringing religion to the Cayuse and converting them to farmers was failing.
Marcus Whitman had been a country doctor before taking up the calling to mission work. As he realized his conversion efforts weren’t going well, he turned more to medical work. Also, the emigrants of the Oregon Trail soon began depending on the Whitmans to help them.
But the Whitmans had the great misfortune to have a wagon train come along in 1847 which brought measles to the Cayuse population. The Indians had no immunity to the disease and it soon killed half their population of 400. A small band of Cayuse blamed Dr. Whitman and may have believed his medicines only worked on white people or, as one rumor had it, he was helping kill off the Indian population so whites could take their land. In any case, in late November, 1947 a group of Cayuse killed Dr. Whitman, Narcissa, and 11 others staying with them and burned the mission.
The Oregon militia took three years to bring five young Cayuse men to hangman’s justice—and it now appears at least one of them was innocent.
Today, the national historical site is a nice, quiet spot and it’s easy to see what drew the Whitmans to this beautiful area.
After our visit to the Whitman mission, we drove west and before long struck the Columbia River. We followed along it for miles and miles, watching the landscape change. A few hours of driving brought us to Biggs, where we saw the point where emigrants first saw the Columbia River. The Columbia is very blue today and is flanked by rugged hills on both sides (with a bit of room for a railroad and Interstate 84). I was surprised how few boats we saw given how nice the river is.
Nearby we entered the Deshutes Recreation Area, a campground/ launch ramp/state park. We obtained a site for the night ($8!) and after supper we walked back along the river for a mile or so.
It’s steelhead and salmon season on the Deschutes so we saw plenty of fishermen yet there’s plenty of room for more. We saw a fisherman carrying a fish he was having trouble holding up. As he walked along we could see its tail occasionally dragging on the ground while its head was higher than the fisherman’s waist.
Back at the van we blogged and read.



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Saturday, 19 September-

This morning after breakfast we had some errands to run. We hit the local Wal-mart, Safeway, and Albertsons to restock. We then drove across town to the Pendleton Woolen Mills, a major employer here. We shopped the expensive woolen clothing and blankets but realized it’s just not us. We’d feel like dudes dressed up in Pendleton western clothing.
After lunch back at the high-school parking lot, we walked into town, again checking out the many vendor booths.
The rodeo began promptly at 1:30 and lasted all afternoon. This was our first rodeo and we loved it. The mc knew how to keep the pace going and the events were downright staggering to watch. Though some guys made it look easy we saw enough misses to understand how tough these events really are.
We saw bareback bronc riding, calf-roping, steer-wrestling, saddle-bronc riding, calf-roping, bull-riding, barrel-racing, and wild-cow milking contests, all done by world-class riders competing for the big prizes of the Pendleton RoundUp.
We finally got out of the rodeo stadium at 1730 and walked back to the van to have supper. Then we drove across Pendleton to the Wild Horse Casino for the night. We would have stayed at the high school but that would have been a $20 charge while parking at the casino is free.
We took a walk through the casino but they’re really not for us. We did stop at the bar and have a martini and Indian fry-bread with honey and huckleberries (WOW did we ever break out of our low-carb diet tonight!) while listening to a country band play for a half-hour or so. Then we returned to the van to blog and read for a few hours.

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Friday, 18 September-

This morning we wound our way back out of 20-some miles of National Forest to get to the hard road at Medical Springs. The area is very much ranch-country and open-range-style ranch country at that. The ranches have to be large because they’re mostly sagebrush. That means there’s forage for the beef cattle to eat but they have to range a long way to find it. Many of the cattle are in their summer range in the mountains so we see them in odd places. We’ll be rattling down some way-back-in-the-woods road and suddenly come upon a steer (or a herd of 10 steers) blocking the road. They give us the evil eye but eventually move and we can pass by.
After we had emerged from the national forest proper (the part with big pines), we were driving on an extremely dusty road past completely dry and yellow grasses and sage when we came to the intersection at Medical Springs. There I saw something odd—an old-time concrete swimming pool, longer than normal perhaps. As we drove past I realized a woman was in the pool swimming. This seemed like the oddest thing--- a larger-than-normal swimming pool in this extremely dry and dusty environment. Then it occurred to me—oh--- THIS must be the ‘medical spring’, i.e., a pool where people go to swim in (and perhaps drink from a spring of) the mineral-rich water.
As we had driven across the latter half of Idaho we had seen the evidence of fairly recent geologic activity. The emigrants had stayed just south of the lava fields of Craters of the Moon National Park and we had seen these same formations far to the west of the Park. So it was easy to believe that geologic features like mineral springs would also be in the area.
We then drove up Route 203 toward Union and LaGrange. Union is a cool little western town. We were intrigued by the hardware/espresso/liquor store and had to go in. It was very much a traditional country hardware store where you could get any kind of nail or screw or gee-gaw and also pick up some fishing lures. But this one had an espresso counter carved out of one corner (probably where the lawn-mowers used to be) and beside it an eight-foot-by-eight-foot well-stocked liquor counter. You’d probably be out of luck if you wanted more than one bottle of anything but I was impressed by their variety.
In LaGrange we had our favorite low-carb Wendy’s meal—the Baconator--- then drove through town looking for the visitor’s center. The visitor’s center sign took us to a billboard, the back of which said ‘See Other Side for Visitor Info’. Some visitor’s center.
We continued on I-84 which in this area follows (or is on top of) the Oregon Trail. We stopped at Emigrant Springs State Park campground which was formerly an emigrant campground as they crossed the Blue Mountains. We took advantage of the $2 showers in the campground (you put $2 per person fee in an envelope, just like you’d pay for a campsite).
Continuing on via I-84, we finally entered the Umatilla Indian Reservation and drove to their Cultural Center. This nice, very modern facility, tells the story of the Oregon Trail migrations from the Indian point of view. And it’s a sad story.
The Umatilla, Walla-Walla, and Cayuse didn’t have a problem with the whites coming through their homeland and in fact helped them. But it soon became clear to them that the whites weren’t just passing through, they were claiming the land for their own. And worse, their diseases were decimating the tribes, killing as many as half of them at a time.
This eventually led to the Cayuse killing a long-time missionary and his wife—the Whitmans—and 11 others who lived with them.
As we checked out the gift shop we saw an ad for Pendleton Roundup and realized we’re in the middle of its run. We spoke briefly with the gift shop person to learn a little more about it, then rushed in to the town of Pendleton to learn more.
An hour later we walked out of the downtown visitor’s center with the last two tickets for the Happy Canyon Indian Pageant tonight and the finals of the Pendleton RoundUp rodeo tomorrow. We also knew where to make arrangements for a campsite from which we could walk to the show grounds rather than have to camp away from the site and then have to pay for parking near the shows.
We settled in to our assigned parking spot at the high school just in time for a quick bite of supper. We then walked across a river bridge to the show grounds.
We were amazed to see hundreds of teepees along the show grounds. These were the campgrounds of the native Americans. And beside their campground were sales tents--- EZ-Up tents, just like at an art show back home—where they were selling their crafts.
We walked the Indian crafts bazaar, then crossed the street to the bazaar of the whites, where cowboy hats, boots, and clothing were the mainstay but you could also but cowboy furniture and all varieties of foods from corn dogs to jerkies, to sno-cones.
When 0700 came, we entered the stadium and took our seats for the Indian Pageant. This is hard to describe but it’s a pageant in the Buffalo Bill sense. A narrator tells a story while its content is acted out by locals in costume. The first part was done by the Indians and they told how they had lived in peace on the land for centuries only to have their land stolen from them by the whites. Later, as the land is indeed taken by the whites, the story transformed into a sort of vaudeville story—the type where the sheriff wears a massively-oversized badge and the villains have big, black handlebar mustaches.
But it was, all in all, great fun. We were a bit surprised by how few punches were pulled by the Indians in their telling the story of their land being stolen from them. Yet the story marched on and we finally saw—for the first time—a wagon pulled by six oxen (as many real-life wagons were) rather than by two horses or mules (because oxen are hard to come by).
After the show we turned in back in Mocha Joe in his high school parking-lot spot.

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Thursday, 17 September-

We left the Boise Cabela’s parking lot early this morning. We had both slept well but woke early and were ready to roll.
We drove to the Oregon border and then turned for Nyssa (OR), where we visited a cool little display about the Oregon Trail. We were led 1/3 of a mile up a trail, which was climbing a hill. There, the sign explained, we could see a full day’s travel for the emigrants. In the distance to our right is the Snake River and in the distance to our left is the Malheur River. The fifteen miles in between was a typical day in this sagebrush-desert.
The view was pretty bleak. There’s no shade and the low sagebrush would both hide rattlers and impede progress with the wagons while the valley would hold the massive amount of dust raised by passing oxen and people. The diary quotes we read reinforced our guess — this was a hot, dusty, boring, slog for the emigrants.
We drove through the little town of Vale (pausing only long enough to look at some of their many murals depicting the Oregon Trail) and on toward John Day. We were actually trying to get to Baker City but had a long way around and not a lot of gas to get there. It was going to be close.
Labashi found us a shortcut, albeit on dirt roads, but it would save us 40 miles. We went across Indian Gulch Road to Bridgeport and turned out loving this little isolated road. The road was very narrow, not pot-holed or wash-boarded, and felt very remote. We’re in range-cattle country and did pass a small ranch here and there but otherwise it was just mile after mile of sagebrush hills.
We made it to Baker City and after gassing up drove to the nearby National Historical Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, high on a hill a few miles outside of town. This is a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) facility and appears to be very new.
As we entered the first of the exhibits, we at first thought their competitors had done this better. But after the first hallway of posed mannequins with voiceovers, the displays got better.
About half-way through, they announced a film will be shown in the auditorium. We watched an excellent Ric Burns documentary about the Donner Party for an hour, transfixed the whole time.
A second documentary, this one about the trip West, wasn’t quite as good but we did learn some new things. Part of the reason for the mass emigration, for instance, was a crash in farm prices in the 1840s.
After the films we finished touring the displays just as the center was closing.
We weren’t sure where we were staying tonight and with darkness only an hour away it was time to figure it out. We could have gone to a Wal-mart at Island City but wanted to see more of the land. We chose a fairly remote campground in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, about 20 miles from Medical Springs. The road wasn’t horrible but had quite a bit of washboarding so our pace was slow. We finally made it to Two Colors Campground and found a site just as it got too dark to keep looking (we had passed an informal campsite (a pulloff with a fire-ring) on the way in and would have used it in a pinch). This part of the forest is now covered in big pines with a fairly open understory. We saw six or seven mule deer on the way in but no ‘big’ animals.
After supper we blogged and read.

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Wednesday, 16 September-

We left our Wal-mart spot a bit late this morning. I had a headache much of the night and didn’t sleep well. I don’t know if the altitude is giving me some problems or what but I’ve been having headaches around bed-time.
On the drive west we stopped at several Oregon Trail sites. We checked out Three Island Crossing at the town of Glenn’s Ferry, where the emigrants had to cross the Snake River running six to eight feet deep. It’s said to be the worst crossing of the trip and many were lost here.
After lunch we drove to Bonneville Point, which, after crossing miles and miles of sand and sage, gave us our first view of Boise. The view is terrific. All is dead and dry around you but off in the distance is a valley filled with trees—and among them is the Boise skyline. The word Boise comes from the French boise’, meaning “wooded”.
In Boise we drove around for a bit of a tour since Boise repeatedly wins honors as one of the best little cities to live in in the US. We ended up at the Library where I spent the rest of the afternoon writing an email to my brothers and Labashi blogged.
As evening came, we drove to nearby Albertson Park to have supper in the van, then walk the wildlife-preserve trails. Someone knew what they were doing here. The stonework and large stone-and-log pavilions are gems.
We then drove through Old Boise and were tempted to walk the streets there to get a sense of the nightlife but since we hadn’t found our home for the night, we decided we’d better move on. On the way to the edge-of-town Wal-mart we passed a Cabelas. We shopped there for an hour or so and I asked Customer Service whether they, like many Cabelas, also allow RVs to overnight in the parking lot and got a positive reponse. We set up for the night in the back lot and caught up on the blog and did some reading about Oregon.

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Tuesday, 15 September-

In our National Forest campsite last night we watched two episodes of ‘Planet Earth’, the excellent BBC series narrated by David Attenborough. Labashi’s little MacPro gave us a wonderful hi-def rendering of the spectacular photography of the series.
In the morning we drove in to Pocatallo to tour the Fort Hall replica. The original Fort Hall stood on what is now the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, about 14 miles north of where the replica stands today. The replica was built in the early 1960’s by a local group.
The replica appears to be typical of a local approach to building an historical replica. I’m willing to buy the basic layout of the fort walls and even of the buildings within the walls. But I’m sure the logs weren’t chinked with concrete and that 20-penny common spikes weren’t used for the walkway planks and handrails. Nevertheless, it’s easy to conjure up images of the traders and emigrants here. The point is the fort was crudely built but served its purpose.
The buildings consist of two types—either replicas of life-in-the-day or displays explaining some aspect of pioneer life. The life-in-the-day re-creations are done better by other sites. The furnishings and gear used here tends to be obviously worn out or broken so it doesn’t give you the feeling the person has just stepped out of the room for the few minutes we’re there.
For a small-time operation, the displays were pretty good. I particularly enjoyed reading transcripts of immigrant diaries where they spoke of Fort Hall. In short, our visit was well worth the $1.75 bargain price we paid for our visit.
After the museum we drove through pleasant little Pocatello and joined I-84 to continue West. We stopped at a roadside rest and walked the trail to Oregon Trail ruts near Massacre Rocks State Park. We finished up our day by finding the Wal-mart along I-84 at Jerome, just outside Twin Falls.
We rented a movie from the Redbox ($1.06 !!) and saw Robert Downey Junior and Jamie Foxx in ‘The Soloist’. It’s the story of an LA Times reporter, Steve Lopez, and a mentally challenged (and homeless) street musician who had attended the Julliard School of Music. Director Joe Wright does a great job of story-telling on this one and both Downey and Foxx amaze us with the skills.

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