We meet the most interesting folks at the local laundromat!! The Lady from Texas was in BOISE as one of the venders at the EXPO where the State Fair had another week to run. Her family owned company had 16 of the 40 games and rides for the two week event. We were LUCKY to ask for a space at the RV PARK on the 2 days between the end of the 4H events and the remaining week of entertainment!! She said that this was her last year - 16 years since she and her husband took over the business from her parents. She was raised as a "carnie" and until recently has enjoyed the ROAD TRIP that is the carnival business; she does go home to Texas for three to five months each year once the State Fairs / County Fairs are over but the profit has been eaten away by policy changes and inflation. California especially has become a pain to work with both financially and paperwork required!! Fortunately, one son still helps with the business end of things AND comes from his home in Texas to MOVE the rigs. THAT seems to be a big deal / a huge enterprise all it's own!! Once that is done, he flies back to his home and family and the paperwork!
From BOISE our next stop for just one night was Pendleton's KOA where we had the back-in spot overlooking a portion of the town including a HUGE Middleschool-Junior High with the mountains we had just descended as our backdrop for a refreshing stop. They provided a paved pad to park the rig on as well as the towing vehicle, a nice picnic table surrounded by grass and a tree. We ate our ice cream under the shade of the tree in our rocking chairs, enjoying the cooling breeze.
Interstate 84 is one of the better freeways we have traveled; it was built in the 50s, 60s and finished in 1975. We probably added an hour to our trip to Pendleton by taking a "road less traveled" thru Fruitland and Payette Idaho but needed a potty stop and a change of drivers, pulling into the go around road at a Mavarick station in Fruitland and getting our business done before one of the semis at the semi side of the station decided to come our way!! Then we proceeded to Highway 210 through a beautiful farming valley on the Oregon side of the Snake River. This side trip included passing a wide piece of farm equipment with our rig; the farm machine took a portion of the opposing lane but the pass was completed uneventfully!! Praise GOD! There were a lot of fields being mowed and harvested before we came to the "Narrow Road" and "Rough Road" signs!! This was the beginning of the Onterio State Recreation Site we had noted on the Rand McNally Road Atlas!! The rough road had been repaired where Hiway 210 skirted the Snake River and several washouts had occurred this Spring. BEAUTIFUL AREA with fishing camps, boat launching area, and then BINGO back to I-84, but just in front of the WIDE LOAD that we had passed back at Caldwell Idaho!! The flat and wide construction item, possibly a roadway of a bridge, had FOUR escort cars or pickups and was two tires off the side of the white line on all six or eight axles. We passed it a total of four times on I-84.
On this side trip we saw snowy egrets, ducks, and geese but in three different contiguous ponds!! There were not as many nesting platforms on Highway 120 as on the highway past Palisades Reservoir on the Idaho / Wyoming border. There the platforms were every mile and the HUGE nests were occupied in most cases by either eagles or osprey.
Our next side road was a stop in Baker City where we enjoyed a Mom-made sandwich in the parking lot of a Dollar Tree (of course we found a nice city park just down the road on our way out of town!) I was a good customer buying a couple of prayer journals and two FALL CUPS for enjoying hot beverages with friends and relatives. I had left the Strawberry Inn Cups in the cupboard in Arizona! We had our cups but no spares! The cashier's daughter had just driven from Sprindfield Missouri to Baker City in an RV by herself, doing her counseling on line as our Kathleen does when on vacation or a trip!! It felt like a GOD appointment. Her daughter will be living in the RV there in Baker City, but Mom wasn't sure for how long!
Taking Highway 30 we rejoined the I-84 at La Grande. The road was getting higher, into the evergreen trees and out of farm country. The mountain road coming down into Pendleton, which is farm country again, reminded us of the road from our place in North Ranch up the mountain to Yarnell and on to Prescott, it was totally separate from the opposing traffic, like almost on a different mountain!!
The KOA in Pendleton is not in the town, which explains why we could not find it a couple of years ago and ended up in the overflow big rig parking lot at the Indian Casino on the east side of town. The KOA is on the bluff on the south side of I-84 and will be a stop for another time since we did not take the time to do any touristy things. I still have a Pendleton shirt that Diana made for her brother and I inherited, and a Arizona motif cape with fancy metal buttons that a friend in Strawberry blessed me with and I wear in the winter in Arizona. So two pieces of Pendleton will serve me well, but I would like to see the town NEXT TIME!!
We lamented the several burned areas in the Columbia River Gorge which we had heard about earlier in the year. Lots of grass fires. Fires are so hard to figure out. How they start, and how they jump from here to there without rhyme or reason other than wind gusts. That is an amazing piece of waterway from wide, smooth lakes to tight gorges topped by buttes that must have seemed a blockade to the folks on the Oregon Trail; daily water for themselves and their critters would have required ropes and pullies to send able-bodied young folks over the edge and then pulling up the buckets and buckets and buckets of water needed for watering the critters and the travelers - washing clothes and bodies occasionally even!! I have read MANY Oregon Trail books in the past six summers and I am not sure that I could have made that trip. I like my comforts too much!
We will be rested up and exercised in the pool here at McMinnville for six days. Thank you Jesus for safe travel and our own bed to sleep in, and a working refrigerator for maintaining safe food for our use. Two of our OLD FRIENDS here in Oregon offered us their spare bedrooms, but we are "stuck in our ways" and said that was why we tow our bed, bath, and kitchen behind us!! We do enjoy our travels though, just need to stay in one place a couple of days at least!!
