Following Edge

The remaining day of our trip, spent mostly in Bend, was practically without event, compared to the rest of the trip so far.

After staying overnight at Tumalo State Park, near Bend, we enjoyed two museums before
returning through Eugene and home.

Our stop at the High Desert Museum was surprisingly interesting. I don't usually get a great kick out of these nature and history museums, but this one had some great historic displays and recreations... plus a Bobcat and Lynx and other animals that Anne Marie thought were cute.

After that, we visited Bend's Old Mill District, which is quite a fancy shopping area, underscoring Bend's grown and gentrification. After lunch, we visited the Working Wonders Children's Museum, which is really more of a learning/play place than a museum, but well organized and obviously loved by many local families.

Arriving home, I feel a great sense of accomplishment for having our new truck and camper where it belongs, and having enough experience with it to know that it's going to work out great for us.

Our original plan had called for reaching Bend on our first night out of Boise, but the extended effort shopping to equip the camper and the brief (90 minute) visit with Anne Marie's relatives got us started late out of Boise. However, Anne Marie had remembered that there were hot springs near Burns (about half way to Bend) and we managed to cross the huge mountains to get there and found the Crane Hot Springs just before bedtime. This was our first night staying in the camper, and it went really well.
The next morning, Lauren and I enjoyed the 104 degree pond and had several pictures taken of us by a news photographer doing a story on the hot springs. When we later rented a private hot springs tub for all 3 of us to enjoy, the photographer knocked to ask if he could take a picture of us in the tub. Uh... I don't know what he was going for, but I had to tell him, "I don't think so". We had gotten the private tub for a bit of privacy after all!

Next, we decided to see if we could see some Kiger Mustangs in the BLM land set aside for them. Anne Marie was very curious about the horses and the BLM described a viewpoint that may be less than an hour from the hot springs. After a short drive on the highway, then a 25 mile ride on a gravel road, we found the 11 mile dirt road to the viewpoint. The first 2 miles were a rutted dirt road, then we got to the muddy, mutted dirt road, then our left, rear tire got stuck in the mud. We were lucky to be able to get back from that point. I can only imagine being stuck in the middle of BLM land, on a road that no one passes and with no cell phone service. Hopefully, anyone else hoping to see the mustangs at this viewpoint will read this and decide against it. The vista above is a shot of the land where we were traveling when we almost got ourselves stuck.
After that experience, and on the way back to the highway to Bend, we did get to see some animals. In fact, as Lauren was ironically listening to Sandra Boynton's song "Cows" on her CD player, she looked up and said, "Speaking of cows, there are some"...

Indeed. It was at least 100 cows led by two cowboys down the highway. Evidently, in Eastern Oregon, this is how they get the cows from one pasture to another. The cows were moving quite slowly, and the cowboy motioned us to move right on through, nearly pushing cows out of our way. For a few minutes, our camper was surrounded on every side by cows and by cursing cowboys. The cowboys were so adept at letting loose a string of obscenities at the cows that I have now switched from the expression "curse like a sailor" to "curse like a cowboy". It appeared they had come quite a ways, since there were cow droppings in the road for the next 15 or 20 miles.

We did actually make it into Bend in the evening and enjoyed a nice meal at Pine Tavern, which is awfully fancy, but we figured we deserved it after missing the Kiger Mustangs and instead seeing hundreds of cows and their droppings.

The plan had been to drive the easy 30 miles from the Prairie Inn in Fairfield to pick up the camper in Bellevue, then return to Boise and do some shopping for our return trip to Eugene, then visit with Anne Marie's relatives for a few hours.

In the real world, we got a much bigger adventure. See, the previous night we had arrived in Boise, pickup up our "new" 1985 Ford pickup about a half hour away from Boise, then drove 2 hours to the Prairie Inn in Fairfield. This hotel is pretty decent and the decor is probably very comfortable to hunters (their usual guests), but being in a big flat space pretty high up, it suffers horribly cold weather. I'm sure there are colder spots in Idaho, but with a low temperature of 22 last night, it turned out that the 3 inch sheet of ice on their parking lot was only the least of our problems. Evidently, the previous owner of the truck had used mostly muddy water mixed with the smallest amount of anti-freeze as coolant. The cold weather froze the muddy coolant and broke open the radiator, bringing us to an overheated halt just a few miles outside Fairfield.

Now, we have AAA, but this is Mormon-land and there are no service stations open on Sunday. Only through a miraculous connection did we get hooked up with an ex-biker (as in Harley-Davidson, not Schwinn) named Neil 75 miles away in Twin Falls. After only 5 hours and hundreds of dollars, we were back on track to get the camper.

Now getting near to dusk, we discovered that the camper was hidden behind a now-familiar sheet of ice, requiring us to shovel gravel to get the truck close to it. However, as you can see from the picture above, we eventually got everything in place and got back into Boise only an hour late for Lauren's bedtime. The truck and camper are a masterpiece, aren't they?

I had a few tears in my eye as we drove back this evening... not from sadness or from exhaustion, but from the beauty of the day. Not only is this part of Idaho striking with its wide vistas of sky and mountain, but the kindness and generosity of every person who played a part in today's trials can only lead me to trust in the goodness of humanity.

Tomorrow, we'll show for camper supplies and visit with relatives, as we had planned for today. We'll be back perhaps a day later than we expected, but no worse for the wear.

We're enjoying an extended layover in Portland, due to a delay on the flight to Boise. That turns out to be just fine as there is a cheesy children's play area (a faw walk at the end of one of the terminals) and free WiFi.

We got to observe the $1.5 million baggage screening machines at the Eugene airport. They're quite nice as the machines completely inspected 4 of our checked bags with no human intervention. However, the 5th item, Michael's "box of mystery", required human intervention and lit up the displays with the contents of the box highlighted in a number of ways. I guess the people that designed the machine weren't anticipating the contents of this box: Truck snow chains, RV Toilet, Toilet bolts, Gloves (3), Wrench/Hammer/Tools, Battery charger (2), Extension cord, Towel. Happily, after a minute or two of gazing into their computers, the screeners accepted our baggage.

The Horizon Air flight was only 36 minutes, but the flight attendant, Leighton, was really a jewel... friendly, confident, and compassionate. Of course, we could have been influenced by the free Syrah wine and Pyramid Snow Cap beer. Very nice!
Next stop, Boise!

Tomorrow morning we begin a big adventure with a flight from Eugene to Boise, Idaho. I may, perhaps, be the only sane person who would plan this adventure
... the others who might plan such a trip are obviously insane.

It all started when we decided that we'll never take the time not have half the skills to remake our old camper in nifty old camper style. Especially given that, at 6, Lauren is now more ready for camping trips and given that we're attending a family reunion at a campground this Summer, I started to look for a camper that we could start using right away and that would last us 10 years. After 10 years, I figure Lauren will be too old to want to talk to us, much less stay in a camper with us.

Anyhow, I found this camper on eBay, then in figuring out how to get it here, I decided to buy this pickup. Because diabetes makes it somewhat unwise for me to take a long and adventurous trip by myself, Anne Marie and Lauren will be going with me. It's been a lot of planning... cheap plane tickets on tiny planes, getting camper tie-downs installed from another state, buying a RV toilet (cheap on eBay), truck snow chains (cheap on craigslist), and a handful of other necessities.

I an eager to start the adventure. My hope is that we'll find everything in good condition and, after the first night or two, enjoy our first night in the camper somewhere between Boise and Eugene.

Wish us luck!

After 3 days without mail earlier this week, and as a person who loves mail more than Gerald Ford, I couldn't have had a better surprise when the mail sorting facility in Springfield called me about a chicken in the mail.

I ran out there before work this morning to pick her up, and have been babysitting her in my office all day. Mostly, she was drinking and eating to recover from her flight from Arkansas, but in the afternoon, she was roosting on boxes and making horribly loud clucking noises. So, I grabbed her up in my arms and took her for a walk to our main office a couple of blocks away, where everyone said she was a very beautiful chicken. After that trauma, she's resting much more quietly in the office.

We bought her yesterday on EggBid, the eBay-like web site for poultry, after the raccoons consumed our previous buff silkie hen last week (as they had her mother last year). While the loss was a hard blow, having a new pullet for our buff silkie rooster is great, since the rooster and previous hen were brother and sister, leaving morally-distasteful incestuous eggs all around the farm.

No name for the new chicken yet, so I am just calling her "Pullet X". We'll be thinking of a name as we get used to her over the coming week. Let us know if you have any suggestions. Our current chickens are named Atilla the Hen, Sadie (which Lauren claimed was short for Satan), Rhonda Bacardi (whose legband number is 151), and John Poppin. That should give you an idea of how conventional our chicken naming has been up to this point.