M loaded his truck with camping things and started off on his trip to explore northwestern Nevada. The first day’s drive was a familiar one, southeast across the Cascades and down to the town of Lakeview, near the California border. There he stopped for the night at a motel. Lakeview hasn’t improved much over the years, but it’s a handy stopping place. This time through, M avoided the Aguila Real Mexican restaurant and dined on the second half of big sandwich he had purchased about 150 miles back. He paired this with a very small bottle of Korbel champagne.
Back in Corvallis, E dealt with the sickly rosemary plant in the front yard. Last fall she’d stuck it into her best large pot. It did well at first but the winter was hard on it. It is still alive but is not thriving and E has lost patience. She wrestled it out–without resorting to breaking the pot–and moved it to a new place in the back yard.
Later in the day, she had a Zoom yoga class and then visited the fabric store in preparation for a reupholstery job. Did she then cook herself a gourmet dinner? No. She had some leftovers and they were fine.
Saturday, April 20th
E went out to buy some candytuft (Iberus) to go into her newly vacant pot. She went to Shonnard’s because she heard that they were having some kind of open house. But she was in for a disappointment. First off, they no candytuft in stock and the sales person actually laughed at her for asking! Even worse, the refreshments–at least at first glance–consisted of just one small dish of paper-wrapped chewy taffy! Not her favorite, not even tolerable. Fortunately E kept on searching and eventually found a dish of Hershey’s Kisses, which she thought were a marked improvement. Still, is that all you can do for open house treats? Ridiculous. Ah, but on the other hand, they had some pretty little blue pots at 50% off. So the trip was not totally wasted.
M departed Lakeview and found his way to an area in the extreme northeast corner of California called Surprise Valley. The valley is about 50 miles long and ranges from four to ten miles wide. It runs north and south between the Warner Range in California and the Hays Canyon Range in Nevada. On the map below the white lines are state borders: California is to the left, Nevada to the right, and Oregon above.
Surprise Valley
When M passed through, the water level in the lakes was higher than in this satellite photo. Do you see that white oval shaped alkali flat southeast of Cedarville? And the wide land bridge that separates Upper Alkali Lake from Middle Alkali Lake? M didn’t see either one of those; he just saw a long unbroken stretch of water. If he came back in another time of year, however, he’d probably see much less water. By August, maybe, a person would able to drive east from Cedarville straight across the dry lake bed and find the road to Vya, Nevada.
Here’s a view looking east; the hills and mountains in the background are in Nevada. Most of the arable land and all of the little towns in Surprise Valley are on the California side of the lake.
In its heyday, a hundred and some odd years ago, the valley was home to a thousand or more people. A number of buildings remain from that era, including these substantial looking school buildings.
Lake City School
Fort Bidwell School. It was built in 1918 when the area population was still growing. One side of the building served elementary students; the other side was the high school.
A lively history of Surprise Valley schools written in 1996 mentions that the Fort Bidwell School was built of dressed native stone and was supposed to last “forever.” Both the Lake City and Fort Bidwell schools are now closed, but the buildings are still standing tall and sturdy at the age of roughly 105. The very first high school to be built in the valley was Cedarville Union High, which opened in 1904. Presumably it was not built to last ‘forever’ as it burned to the ground in 1935.
Most of today’s Surprise Valley homes and ranches seem prosperous enough, but there are still a number of abandoned houses, this being one of the best preserved. Should we say that this house was tragically doomed by the unreliability of its humans? Or should we say that its owners finally set it free to find its own way?
After touring Surprise Valley, M crossed into Nevada and continued south to the town of Gerlach at the lower end of the Black Rock Desert. This area is home to Burning Man, a week-long party attended by upwards of 75,000 people each year. The Black Rock Desert is a fifty mile long alkali flat, which is barren and featureless until the Burning Man invasion. It takes a month to clean up after Burning Man, but during that month every trace of the party is removed. M can testify that in April of 2024 it looked as barren and featureless as ever.
Here’s a tiny swath of the Black Rock Desert at its narrowest point near the town of Gerlach.
From Gerlach M headed east into a seriously empty part of the Nevada, as in no towns, no rest areas, no campgrounds, no nothin’. But he did see some wild horses and one speedy antelope that seemed to be challenging him to a race.
There were no paved roads, but many of the gravel roads were in fantastic condition, having just received their once-a-year, post-winter grading. After only a few hours heading east M found the scattered remains of a place called Sulphur that had once been a railroad town. A sign pointed toward something called Rosebud Spring ten miles away. That sounded like a good place to camp, so off he went.
When he arrived at Rosebud Spring, M found out that he wasn’t the only one interested.
Not wanting to intrude, he made his camp a quarter of a mile down the road. During the roughly fourteen hours that M spent here, the road saw no other traffic.
Viewed from his campsite, the moon rose early in the east…
…and the sun set late in the west.
Sunday, April 21st
Today E worked on chores and on her sewing projects–a cushion and a bathroom curtain. Then, as a reward, she went to another nursery in search of candytuft. As it happened, she had a quite different experience. Besides having lots of candytuft available, Garland nursery had their own party going and treats galore.
M breakfasted on a two-day-old chocolate ginger scone from Bodhi’s Bakery, a fine establishment located about 450 miles away from his current location. Then he packed up and continued south and east in the general direction of Imlay, Nevada. After an hour or so he came to a place where he could see that the road was leading him toward a body of water.
His map identified it as Rye Patch reservoir. Just for a change, this lake contains fresh water and has an outlet. It owes its existence to a dam on the Humboldt River. The Humboldt arises in the mountains of northeastern Nevada and flows southwest for some three hundred miles. This being the Great Basin, there is nowhere for it to flow out and it never finds its way to an ocean. Instead, it disappears into a large wetland area called The Humboldt Sink and is never seen again. At this time of year the Humboldt runs pretty high. Here’s what it looked like when M finally reached it.
As it passed through Nevada in the 1840’s, the original California Trail followed alongside the Humboldt for a few hundred miles. The old route is still passable in many places, passable that is, for four-wheel-drive vehicles piloted by determined and perhaps mildly masochistic drivers. M drove the Trail for ten miles at a place where the old route was still in occasional use by ranch traffic. It took about an hour to go the ten miles. Oddly enough, there was no other traffic of any kind. It seems that the overwhelming majority of drivers who travel through the area prefer to use I-80, which parallels the route about fifteen miles to the south. Why this should be so is such a mystery. M suspects that it has something to do with people wanting to get somewhere. (In one of his books Edward Abbey gave his idea of what constitutes a good road. Does anyone remember it? Was the book Desert Solitaire?)
Monday, April 22nd
E’s assignment for today included installing her new candytuft into its pot and remembering to take out the garbage. (This last is a chore that E is normally reluctant to do because M seems to enjoy it so much.) She then went out to dinner with H at the Spaghetti Factory.
Having spent the night at a motel in Winnemucca, M set off north toward the wilds of southeastern Oregon. He had planned to camp somewhere up there, but was now wavering. Night time temperatures were predicted to be below freezing, which didn’t seem all that pleasant. He ended up exploring some nice country in the Cow Creek area and then moving on to another motel in the town of Ontario, Oregon.
Tuesday, April 23rd
M’s hotel in Ontario turned out to be a Red Lion on the Idaho side of the border. M had a light supper and then went to the Dairy Queen down the road for a more substantial dessert. In the morning he got up at 7:15, had a quick breakfast and was on the road by 7:45. He made pretty good time, churning along Highway 20 past the Oregon onion fields. In fact he went so fast that by the time an hour had passed, it was still only 7:45.
Thanks to this early start M got back to Corvallis at 3:30 or so and found E slaving away in the back garden, filling up those pretty new pots that she got from Shonnard’s. For dinner they had Amy’s frozen dinners and hybrid margaritas. Very fine.
Wednesday, April 24th
M spent all day cleaning up the camping stuff, including hosing down a bunch of gear that had gotten massively dusty. And then of course there was the truck itself, which needed cleaning both inside and out. And the garage had to be cleaned up because the solar installers were coming…
E did some critical grocery shopping and made other preparations for tomorrow’s meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society, which she is hosting. For one thing, she mixed up a batch of piecrust. She’ll roll it out tomorrow and use it to make a pie, a pie which is not destined to be lemon meringue. (!)
Thursday, April 25th
After a long spell of mostly dry weather, the rains have made a return, a welcome one as far as the yard is concerned, but perhaps not so pleasing to the guy mounting the solar panels on the garage roof. The installation is supposed to be finished today or tomorrow; the rain is supposed to stay on several days longer.
M went out for an eye appointment in the morning and when he returned was treated to an empty house smelling of just baked cherry pie. E had gone to BBB class, trusting that Goldilocks would not come by. The solar installers were finished by 3:30. A few more steps remain before the panels can go online.
The meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society began at 5:00. It went well and everyone seemed to like E’s cherry pie. But this variation from the lemon meringue tradition inspired one member–the rational one–to propose changing the name of the group to something more general. This suggestion was dismissed immediately with a resounding chorus of negatives. Make no mistake, this is a rowdy crew.
Friday, April 26th
We spent the day prepping for our trip to Joshua Tree. Our plane leaves tomorrow at 7:00 am, so we’ll have to be out of here before 5:00 am. Who planned this trip?
We drove thirty-five miles or so south down to Eugene and then flew up into the air, heading north. The day was clear and our flight path was relatively low, so we could look down and see I-5 almost all the way up to Seattle. We had a 45-minute layover at Sea-Tac, then lifted off for Boise. We were still climbing when we passed very close to Mount Rainier. Spectacular.
We rented a car at the Boise airport and checked into a Quality Inn. Once we got in the room, we understood why the motel was not called the High Quality Inn. For one thing, our room was missing a least one piece of furniture. But basically it was okay. So we also understood why they didn’t call it the Low Quality Inn. We had dinner at the Denny’s next door. The meal scored highly for proximity to our hotel.
Sunday, July 16
This was our day to kick around Boise. We decided to go to the Idaho Botanical Garden, which is located on the outskirts of the city at 2355 Old Penitentiary Road. It turned out to be quite nice. There is an English garden, a rose garden, a meditation garden, a children’s garden, a koi pond, a native plant area, and more. Plus, immediately adjacent to the garden, there is an old penitentiary. Not so nice.
A helpful sign pointed out that this section of the garden was where temporary gallows were constructed when an execution took place. Hangings took place outside the walls of the prison so as not to disturb the sensibilities of the other prisoners.
After walking through the garden, we toured the penitentiary, which has been developed into a museum. It is one of only three decommissioned U.S. prisons that are open for public view. Someone has gone to a lot of work to provide extensive interpretive information about the history of the prison and the people who were there. A sign at the entrance invites any visitors who happen to be former ‘residents’ or family members of residents to contact the museum staff if they would be willing to help with the ongoing research.
Four of the cell block buildings are open to walk through. The oldest, dating from the late 19th Century, has incredibly tiny individual cells with steel latticed doors. The cells in the middle aged blocks were a mix of single, double and triple bed cells and had the more familiar steel bar doors. The newest block, completed in the early 1950’s, was noticeably more humane and had somewhat larger spaces. None of the cells had windows. The prison closed in the 1970’s after several buildings were damaged during a series of riots.
One of the most interesting exhibits is a row of 24 cells where each cell has an information placard about one of the prisoners who spent time there. The Information includes dates, reason for incarceration, a photo of the resident, and in many cases, information about what happened to that person once they were released.
The experience of seeing the prison was a little creepy and we did not take pictures. For the curious, there are lots of (uncreepy) photos and other information here.
After the prison tour, we retired to our motel room to recuperate and to get out of the 105 degree heat. Later on we took a hint from one of our readers and had dinner at Twigs Bistro in Meridian, a Boise suburb.
Twigs is a lovely place. The distance from here to life in those old cell blocks is so vast as to be almost incomprehensible.
Monday, July 17
After a less than high quality breakfast, we went to pick up our overlanding vehicle from Idaho Overland Adventures. Owners Brianne and Joe had everything ready for us and gave us a one-hour orientation before sending us off. The vehicle we rented is a Toyota 4Runner that has been modified to include a rooftop tent, a nice sized side awning, and a slide-out kitchen in the rear. The kitchen includes a 12-volt refrigerator running off a dedicated battery that can be charged either by the truck’s electrical system–while driving–or by a solar panel for days when the truck is parked. The truck also has an impressive Garmin GPS system that not only tells drivers where they are and what roads to take, but also relays the truck’s position to the home unit in Boise and allows for emergency communication no matter how far out in the boonies one might be.
On the first day, we didn’t actually use any of these things. Instead we just drove a couple of hundred highway miles down to Elko, Nevada and stayed in a motel. The motel was nicer than our previous one, but it also had a big bare spot in one corner of the room. In back of the motel we saw a couple of dozen armchairs and three or four couches arranged in neat rows in an unused part of the parking lot. Are all hotels like this? E went for a swim in the pool. And then we had dinner at a Basque restaurant.
Tuesday, July 18
Today our trip began for real. First we made a meal plan for the next two days and went off to the market to get what was needed. That done, we filled up the tank at what we thought might be the last gas station we would see for the next two hundred miles. We then drove north on Nevada Highway 225 and started looking for the road to Jarbidge via the ghost town of Charleston. We did not know that there were actually two ways to get to Charleston from the highway–one good one and one bad one. We turned off on Humboldt River North Fork Road. As we found out later, that’s the bad one. In fact, in places, it was terrible–not really dangerous for people, but hard on machines. It was also beautiful, passing as it did through the low hills of uninhabited sagebrush desert. The Garmin was really helpful; it knew the route well and was quick to let us know what to do whenever we had to decide between two faint tracks, each seemingly leading farther into nowhere.
Eventually we came to the end of the wrong road and connected up with the better one. We passed the Charleston ghost town and found that there was still an active cattle operation going on there. We also found active cattle.
Finally we got to the high point of the trip–both literally and figuratively–Copper Basin and Bear Creek Pass. The former was the area that M thought we just had to see.
The road to Jarbidge climbs along the east side of Copper Basin and eventually reaches Bear Creek Pass at 8,488 feet. It then drops very steeply down the other side of the mountain till it reaches the level of the Jarbidge River at about 6,500 feet. The town is just a few miles downstream. We set up in a somewhat primitive campground next to the river a half mile from the town.
Getting in and out of bed required a ladder. Note the awning extending out from the driver’s side. That came in handy when it rained.
At around 2:00 in the morning, M descended the ladder and went out stargazing. The Jarbidge River canyon is steep and narrow, which meant that he could only see a relatively narrow band of sky running north and south between the canyon walls. Still, it was a moonless night and the nearest town of any size was 100 miles away, so there were plenty of stars to gaze at. The Milky Way, meanwhile, was running east and west, and looked like a glowing white bridge stretching across the canyon from rim to rim.
Wednesday, July 19
In the morning the weather was again sunny and warm, pleasant in the shade but a little harsh out in the sun. We walked into town to see the sights.
In 1909 there was a gold strike in the area and miners began to pour in. One story has it that the town was first called Mahoney, after an early prospector. For reasons unknown, the name was later changed to Jarbidge, a mispronunciation of the Shoshone word Tsawhawbitts. (According to Shoshone legend, Tsawhawbitts was a giant cannibal who roamed a certain canyon in the far reaches of northern Nevada, hunting for unsuspecting men to toss into a large basket and carry back to camp for dinner.) Eventually a large-scale gold mine operated in the canyon, with a vertical shaft running down 1100 feet, where a number of horizontal shafts branched off. The apparatus in the photo below was located at the top of the vertical shaft and was part of the mechanism for operating the elevators that would take miners up and down and bring the ore up. Production was high for about ten years but then gradually declined, finally ceasing in 1932.
These days there are several dozen buildings in Jarbidge, including a hotel (of sorts), two bars, and a general store. Of the many houses, some are very nice, but few are very large. Some houses don’t look like much at all, at least at first glance. Look again, though, and you see that most of them are solid, snug and well-maintained. Only a few of them are lived in all year. The over winter population is said to be about fifteen hardy souls. The most crowded time of year is hunting season. During our time there, the town was alive, but hardly lively. There seemed to be only one business open, a bar/restaurant called the Outdoor Inn.
There are no paved streets in Jarbidge and the town speed limit is 10 mph. There wasn’t much traffic, either vehicular or pedestrian. As we walked along Main street, we did see one very neatly dressed old man slowly make his exit from the Outdoor Inn. He used a walker to shuffle over to a white pickup truck, got in and drove away, stopping at a house about 300 yards south on the same street. Presumably that was where he lived. Then an ATV came by, driven by a girl who looked to be ten or eleven years old. There was another girl in the seat beside her. They were just barely tall enough to see over the dash, but they were laughing and having a grand time. After a few minutes the driver returned, this time without her friend. Later on, another ATV passed by, this one driven by a boy, who was maybe seven or eight. If he had been seated, he would have been too short to see over the dash, so he stood on the floor of the machine just behind the wheel. As he passed, we were both struck by how small he was to be driving down the street, but even more by his demeanor. With his eyes fixed straight ahead, he stood as motionless as a statue, with a serious, stoical, trancelike expression with a hint of sadness.
Back at our camp, we were feeling hot and dry, so we went and sat in the river for a while. There was still a little snow melting up in the hills, so we got cooled off pretty quickly. After that we dried off and went back up to the truck for lunch. As we ate we noticed some light cloudiness moving in from the northwest. It was nice to have a little less sun and we started thinking about naps. But then the clouds got darker and we could hear a bunch of thunder off somewhere. Vay! Vay! Vay! as you might say. E located our rain shells and started moving all non-waterproof items to shelter and M jumped up on top of the truck to reach up and extend the rain flaps around the roof tent. That process is quick and easy, but only if you know what goes where. We really appreciated having had the benefit of Joe’s detailed orientation back in Boise. By the time the storm hit us, the tent was prepared, the truck was closed up and we were settled in on our folding chairs under the awning. Which was good, because the rain came hard and fast.
It lasted about 45 minutes. Quite enough, thank you.
After the rain stopped, the clouds lightened a little and we had a visitor. E took its picture.
Thankfully, that one shower was the extent of the rain and we were able to cook dinner without drowning our veggie burgers and cookies. After dinner, we took another walk, this time in the direction away from town. There were striking rock formations on both sides of the canyon that looked quite lovely in the early evening light.
Thursday, July 20
Today we had to get back to Boise and return the 4Runner, as early in the day as possible. So we were up at 6:00 and on the road by 7:00. We took the easy route out of Jarbidge, one that M knew well from his previous visit. Also, we knew we had plenty of gas. So it was a relatively stressless trip, the only problem being that Boise was about six hours away. We got there, though, and made a quick stop at the airport, where E rented a car while M continued on to turn in the truck. By 3:00 in the afternoon we were checked into a very nice room at a Hampton Inn downtown. We had just enough time to clean up and go to dinner at Epi’s, a very nice Basque restaurant. This we had been looking forward to the whole time. It did not disappoint.
Friday, July 21
Up at 5:15 today and on our way to the airport by a little after 6:00. The Boise airport is nice, very easy to understand and to deal with. Our plane was late taking off, however, because of heavy fog in Seattle! Fog? The whole idea was preposterous! But there it was, and the delay almost made us miss our connection. Isn’t it amazing how slow some people in airports can be, if you happen to be in a hurry? But we got to the gate in plenty of time, at least two minutes before they closed the door. By 11:00 we were back in Oregon. At the Eugene airport, by the way, the Eugene Library has provided an automated story/poem dispenser in a corridor on the way to the gates. You push a button to choose one of the two, short story or poem, and the machine prints one up and spits it out for you. E got a short story, which was rather nice.
Saturday, July 22
Looks like it must be M’s birthday.
Sunday, July 23
We had another party today with A who came down from Vancouver. This time there was cake!
NOTE: The following is a special (bonus) feature from the editors of Meandering On The Way. It gives a more complete account of M’s road trip to Idaho and Nevada. WARNING: If you are not interested in boondock camping and/or curious about that part of the world, this could bore you to tears. No one’s feelings will be hurt if you skip it.
Part 1: Thursday and Friday
Some online sources from Nevada say that the town of Jarbidge is one of the most remote and hard to get to places in the state. It’s way up near the Idaho border and it’s about as far from Las Vegas as you can get–in several senses. A Nevadan who wanted to visit Jarbidge would first go to Elko, which is in the northeast part of the state, and then go 106 miles farther north. The second half of the route is on gravel and they say that very last part is so rough that you need four wheel drive. Also the road is closed in the winter. People also say that the scenery along the way is spectacular; M wouldn’t know because he didn’t go in that way. He went in from Idaho, which is easier. If you start from Twin Falls, for example, the trip to Jarbidge is only 92 miles and there is a small town or two along the way. Much of that route is also on gravel, but the roads are mostly smooth and straight and do not require 4WD.
Which is fine if you live in Twin Falls, but say you live in Western Oregon. To access Jarbidge from Idaho, first you’d have to get to Idaho. The easiest way to do that is to take I-84, which begins in Portland, goes all the way across Oregon and half of Idaho, and passes right through Twin Falls. As we shall see, M didn’t quite do that, but he did start out that way. After dropping E off at the Portland airport, he drove the first 400 miles of I-84, stopping in the town of Ontario, Oregon, right on the Idaho border. It was a longish drive, but M didn’t really mind. He’d brought a lunch from home, which he ate in a neighborhood park in Pendleton. Once in Ontario he rested for the night in a motel and finalized his plans for the following day. His idea was to proceed into Idaho somewhat indirectly, traveling southeast, not by the easiest and fastest route but rather by the opposite of that. Just for variety.
After an unexpectedly awesome free breakfast at his motel (Clarion), M set off southward from Ontario on U.S 20/26, looking for the road to the Succor Creek State Recreation Area. He soon came to Nyssa, Oregon where he missed a turn, resulting in an embarrassing number of miles traveled in the wrong direction. He was in Homedale, Idaho before he figured this out. So the first challenge of the day was to navigate sideways across some Idaho farm country trying to somehow intersect with Oregon Hwy 201, which was the key to his finding the road to Succor Creek. He ended up traveling west on Idaho 19 until he re-crossed the border, at which point Idaho 19 magically turned into Oregon 201 and everything got easier. In the unlikely event that you find yourself looking for Succor Creek Road without bothering with a map or GPS, don’t forget to make that right turn at Nyssa. It’ll save you time.
Anyway, after 532 miles of pavement driving, M was finally onto a proper road. It was nice and wide at first but also dry and dusty. Quite dusty. M has a fiberglass shell on the Frontier and the seal between truck and shell is dust proof. But the truck bed itself is not sealed very well. In fact, pickup truck beds are specifically designed with the goal of making sure that water can get out of the bed. This means that there are actually large gaps around the tailgate.
When you drive much on dry gravel–and especially if you go very fast–a lot of dust can get sucked in through those gaps.
To address this problem, M had recently made a dust barrier. This consisted of a strip of foam left over from the truck bed mattress project combined with a wooden frame. This trip would be its first test.
When the tailgate is closed, the foam blocks the gaps. It worked great in M’s driveway, but that could be because there was no dust in the driveway..
M had forgotten, of course, to assemble the dust barrier before he left Ontario. So now he had to pull over and do it by the side of the road. But that was okay. It was kind of nice to have a reason to stop and take in the view.
When he stopped to put in the dust barrier, M got a first glimpse of Succor Creek as it passed through a cattle ranch.
A few miles farther on M stopped again. The road had diverged from the path of the creek, but he was pretty sure that he would see the creek again up there somewhere. The road was a little rougher here and the land looked drier and less productive. After this point he saw no more houses or other structures..
The terrain changed from flat to hilly. The road went only gently uphill, but the land on either side got higher. Soon M came to a sign announcing the Succor Creek Recreation Area. It was around there that the road reunited with the creek.
The gray line is Succor Creek Road. M was driving south, coming down from the top of this map.
As he got farther into it, M realized that the Succor Creek area was not quite what he had imagined. He’d been thinking of something isolated, with steep roads and a very small creek. He was thinking that it would be treeless, uncrowded, and lacking in any interesting rock formations. Why, he now asks, was he thinking that? Why didn’t he know exactly what it would look like? There are tons of Succor Creek photographs online and it would have been easy to find them. But M feels that he already has a lot of second hand information, way too much. What he needs are a few more dreams, simple ones that he can keep a handle on, and then some first hand information to go with them.
The reality of Succor Creek is that it was not all that isolated and that the creek was pretty good sized. Moreover, the official camping area had trees–not big ones but definitely trees. Similar trees were thick along the creek. And it was in a canyon, a sort of deep one.
The walls of the canyon were vertical on the east side…
…and steep on the west side. Also, there were rock formations.
M’s first order of business was to find a place to camp. Anticipating a possible Friday evening influx of other campers, he had arranged to arrive on a Friday morning. There were two sorts of places to camp: the official campground at one end of the canyon and a number of informal pull-offs at various places along the road. M went up to the campground to check it out first. It had eight sites arranged in a cramped circle around a waterless restroom building. As mentioned, there were a few trees to provide shade. The four best sites were already occupied. And since their occupants all had large campers or travel trailers, the area already seemed crowded. (Ha! Little did he know.) He turned around and went back down the road. Most of the pull-offs were still empty. M found a beautiful one, nicer than he’d expected. And by nice we mean that it was away from the road, had access to its own stretch of creek and provided some beautiful views. There were no trees where he parked, so he had to use the truck to make some shade.
The solar panels were very pleased with their sunny location and starting putting out watts with wild abandon.
There was a steep little side canyon close by and M thought maybe there would be some kind of trail up to the top. He started looking for such a route. But it was not to be. After huffing and puffing upward for a while and finally finding himself in a place that seemed too steep for safety, he gingerly made his way back down. After that he took his chair down to the stream and sat there for a while. Could a person who was sitting down there take off their shoes and cool their feet in the creek? Yes they could, but not for long. That water was cold. After a while M went back up to his campsite, set his chair down in the shade of the truck and spent some time watching the gray cliffs on the far side of the creek. The cliffs didn’t really do much and didn’t have much to say. They did communicate that they were there, that they were getting pretty old, and that despite their great age they still planned to be around a lot longer than M would be. Was the difficulty in making conversation due to the fact that the language of the cliffs was too primitive to express anything beyond the basics? Or was it because their language was just so different from M’s language that he couldn’t really understand it? Would Google Translate help? Naw, M was out of cell range. It seemed hopeless. Was it time for dinner yet? (For another take on the topic of communicating with the natural world, see this poem by Becky Hemsley. –Ed.)
In the middle of the night M had to get up and discovered that the moon was up too.
Finding Jarbidge – Part 2: Saturday
In the morning M wanted to get started early, as he had a long way to go. But just before he left, he took a few minutes to walk up the hill and take this picture, which shows the first leg of the day’s planned route.
It’s not easy to see, but from here the road follows the creek around to the right of that green pyramid thing. It then continues winding through the canyon, until finally climbing up onto the more open country above.
M had noticed the evening before that he had been right to have arrived early in the day. There’d been a lot of traffic on the road. And there was even more this morning. And when he passed by the campground, he found it transformed–jammed with a dozen vehicles, lots of tents and trailers and a whole bunch of people who seemed to be having a grand time. On the other hand, that was the end of the inhabited area of Succor Creek. For the next hour of his drive south M didn’t see anybody.
Just past the campground Succor Creek Road again parts ways with Succor Creek. The creek stays down low while the road climbs up the west slope to reach the more or less flat country near the canyon rim. Here’s a view back down into the canyon after M had gotten up out of it.
The high country was flatter and was covered in a mixture of sagebrush and grass.
M passed a small herd of horses and got two of them to pose.
The road onward looked pretty empty, but M knew it went somewhere. Sure enough, after a while he started to see ranches again. Another sign of human presence was a giant parking area for some kind of high desert equestrian jamboree. He saw nothing of the actual event, just a fenced field that had been turned into a parking lot for pick-ups. There were twenty or thirty of those, each one hooked up to a horse trailer. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Where were the horses and their riders? Off having fun somewhere, but where exactly and what kind of fun was a mystery.
Soon there were more farms and ranches. You wouldn’t call the area densely populated–no one’s nearest neighbor was closer than three quarters of a mile–but there were enough families around to have an active school.
Rockville School
This being a Saturday, the school was closed. (Our editor wants to know why they weren’t having graduation this weekend.)
Next came a major waypoint in M’s plan to get to Jarbidge by indirect means. (You’ll remember that Jarbidge is in Nevada, but first he had to get to Idaho, and here he was still in Oregon. As far as indirectness goes, he was doing pretty well. But that couldn’t last forever.) Not many miles past the school, Succor Creek Road ended at an intersection with U.S. Highway 95. At mile 571 of his journey he was going back onto pavement. He turned right and headed south, looking to get back off pavement as soon as possible. Seven miles later, there it was: Cow Creek Road. Or was it De Lamar Road? M’s sources disagreed. Never mind, it was headed in the right direction. He happily turned left and was on the gravel again. Not only that, he was in Idaho! (Not that there was any sign, but that’s what the map said.)
Cow Creek Road led southeast up a pretty little valley with a creek running down the middle. The landscape was treeless, but there was verdant new grass in the pastureland nearest the creek…
…and a carpet of yellow flowers off in the distance.
M counted four widely separated ranch houses along the creek. His wasn’t the only vehicle on the road; there was a white sedan poking along ahead of him. Eventually it turned off down the half mile long ‘driveway’ of the third ranch.
A few miles past the fourth house, things changed a little. The road was still following the creek, but the terrain was a little more hilly and the land on either side of the creek was drier. That was also the area where the people who made the road had decided that it needed to cross the creek, not once but twice. On the day M was there the fords looked like this:
This is actually the second ford, the first had been identical in shape but a little larger.
M had never seen fords like this and at the first crossing he had to stop and get out and study it a little. He was, after all, out there all by himself, with no chase car to pull him out if he got stuck. As it turned out, these were nicely made crossings, with a firm, smooth bottom that wasn’t as far under the surface of the water as it first appeared. Off we go.
In the next few miles the terrain started getting steeper and trees began to appear. M came to a junction with another road that came in from the southwest. The two roads merged and headed east into the mountains. There was a sign there stating that the road was not maintained and that if anyone who used it required search and rescue, that person should be prepared to bear the entire cost. That was okay with M, especially on a clear day in lovely weather. In fact, it’s a pretty good policy, probably too good to last. In the future, when the world has finished going to hell in a hand basket, the road will have been technologically enhanced. There will be an entry gate which automatically locks your vehicle into self-driving mode. They’ll tell us it’s safer.
As it was, M drove himself up into the mountains. The road got narrower and rougher, but still not too bad. Eventually he came to the site of an old mine. It appeared that at some point people had lived near the mine and there were several vintage homes just across the creek from it:
This one was nice…
…but you’d have to call this a fixer upper.
A short distance past the mine M passed some buildings that had definite signs of being inhabited, at least in the summer. It was pretty quiet and although M didn’t actually see anyone, someone was probably there. The road got worse past this point. It wasn’t steep but it was very narrow and there was little or no gravel, just natural rocks and dirt. There were big brown puddles of recent snow melt whenever you came to a flat part. Since there were no big washouts, it was easily passable, as long as you kept it slow. There was nice scenery to be had on either side, but M couldn’t take his eyes off the road much to enjoy it. Still, he was having a pretty good time, picking his way along, pleased that there was no other traffic. And then, of course, suddenly there was other traffic, a white pick-up truck heading straight toward him. It was a full-sized truck and even though M’s truck was smaller, it was hard to see how the two vehicles were going to get past each other. To M’s right was a steep drop into the river and on the left there was an equally steep slope upward. The oncoming driver found a place where the road was slightly wider, pulled over as much as he could, and paused, which was nice for him because he was on the upslope side and M was the one who was going to roll down into the creek if it all went bad. But it actually went fine. M crept slowly ahead, not quite sure about that right edge, just making sure he was as close as possible to the other truck on his left. There was about an inch of clearance between their respective side mirrors as he went past.
Later on there were two more oncoming vehicles, but he met both of those on less stressful parts of the road. And then, by golly, a big blue pickup appeared behind him! Geez, that made four cars over the course of less than an hour. Somehow he had gotten caught in rush hour traffic on the road to Silver City.
M knew he was on a road that led to Silver City because he had seen those words next to a dot on his map. He was decidedly not prepared for what he found when he finally got there. It turns out that Silver City is a booming tourist attraction, a ghost town whose body has been reanimated and repurposed from silver mining to 21st Century fun times in the mountains. (For photos of the town and details about its history, click here.) Late spring/early summer is high season for visitors to Silver City and on the Saturday that M came through there were hundreds of them. It was chaos, with dozens of vehicles trying to navigate through narrow dirt streets with more potholes than you can imagine. There were some hand-lettered signs saying that the speed limit was ten miles per hour. But with all the potholes and all the kids and their associated grownups running around it was best to go even slower than that.
There are about seventy structures in the town, all over a hundred years old. Silver City began as a mining boomtown in the 1860’s and prospered up until 1900, when it began its decline. By 1940 the one-time population of thousands had shrunk down to just one person, who proudly self identified as both mayor and fire marshal. The reanimation of the ghost town began in the early 1970’s, when someone reopened an old hotel. Although the land is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, all of the structures are privately owned, often by descendants of the original miners.
All M wanted to do was find his way through the mess. It took him a few minutes, but he did finally find a way out. Silver City is situated right at the pass, so he soon found himself descending the eastern side of the Owyhees. The road down into Idaho was wider and smoother than the one he had just come up from Oregon. There was also way more traffic. Besides cars and trucks, there were dozens of roaring OHV’s and dirt bikes. But the route also offered some beautiful views, which he was able to enjoy when he found a likely place to pull off and have lunch.
The rest of his day’s drive was uneventful. The road–now named Silver City Road–led down out of the mountains and into flatter country. At mile 626 of his trip the gravel surface ended and pavement returned. Ten miles later he had reacquired cell service. He told his phone to direct him to Mountain Home, Idaho, a largish town where he planned to spend another night in a motel.
What about Jarbidge? you may ask. Well, getting to Jarbidge from Mountain Home isn’t quite as easy as getting there from Twin Falls, but it’s close.
Finding Jarbidge – Part 3: Sunday and Monday
If M had actually been in Twin Falls, getting to Jarbidge would have been simple. He would have taken U.S. 93 south down to Rogerson, Idaho, then turned off the highway onto Three Creeks Road, then taken the third left onto 1520 N Road, which is also Three Creek Road. (Okay, that’s mildly complicated.) Anyway, Three Creeks Road is the key to finding Jarbidge from the Idaho side. It gets you within fifteen miles of the actual place.
Here’s Rogerson, just about all of it. M is sorry he missed it. That’s U.S. 93 in the lower right. Three Creeks Road is the street leading out to the west in the upper left.
Being in Mountain Home made finding Three Creeks Road a little more complicated, but M just did what Siri told him to do. The drive took three and a half hours to go just 150 miles. It was a mix of gravel and pavement. The first half was through farmland, most of it dead flat. Then came sagebrush country that had a few more hills. And then at the very end, just before the Jarbidge turn-off, M had a glimpse of more rugged country.
A view from Three Creek Road, about 17 miles from Jarbidge and just a few miles north of the Nevada Idaho border.
The last place in Idaho that M came to is called Murphy Hot Springs. Beyond that the road to Jarbidge got much worse. It was wide enough not to be scary and it wasn’t steep or muddy, but it was seriously bumpy. Nice scenery, though.
After ten or so miles of very slow going over the bumps, suddenly the road got wider and smoother. Though no human beings appeared, signs of human habitation were abundant. Eventually, there it was, the Jarbidge main drag.
On the left: the Outdoor Inn promises Booze, Grub and Rooms. On the right: the Red Dog Saloon offers drinks and food only.
The most active looking business on this day was the general store. M bought a Jarbidge hat.
Next to the store, the old Jarbidge jail, with possibly the world’s strangest looking sheriff.
Given that the prisoner looks pretty well dead, are the ball and chain really necessary? On the other hand, no one wants him running around in this condition.
After visiting the Trading Post and touring the jail, M drove out of town and starting looking for a place to camp. He found that there were several campgrounds in the area, all of them pretty basic, all of them a ways out of town, and all of them empty of campers. As he was driving around to check them all out…it started to rain. Around this time, he passed the spot where the Pine Creek West Fork flows into the Jarbidge River. Both streams were running high and it was quite a sight.
The rain stopped after half an hour. The clouds turned from gray to white and broke apart so that some blue was showing. There was even a little sunshine. Hmm, said M, who was not eager to camp in the rain. Now maybe this was just one passing storm–or maybe not. He took a little walk up the road and saw an abandoned mine up on the hillside that would be great to explore and maybe take pictures of. But just then the sky began to darken, in a rather serious way. M turned around and headed back to the truck. The rain started just a minute or two before he got there. The sky was all dark and showed no sign that the rain would be stopping very soon. “Okay,” said M after fifteen or twenty minutes, “I’ve seen Jarbidge. And now I’m leaving and going back to that motel in Mountain Home.” It was around 3:30 in the afternoon and it was another three and a half hour drive back to MH, but it could be done. He headed back to Idaho. As he made his way north again, along that ten miles of really bumpy road, the rain continued with no sign of slacking. Even in the rain the scenery was pretty nice.
M later thought that he probably should have just got a room at the Outdoor Inn, and some booze and grub to go with it. But if he had, he would have missed a rather spectacular drive back across Idaho. Once he got out of the canyons and hills and back onto the seemingly endless flatlands, he saw that there were thunderstorms scattered all over the place. At any given time he could see two or three of them: off to the right, off to the left, ahead or behind. Each storm featured its own dark clouds, thin streaks of lightening and dark curtains of rain. For a while the roads he was on were dry or just faintly damp. Then suddenly he came upon a minor flood and saw that the next twenty yards of road were covered with two or three inches of water. He slowed down as quickly as he could, but still made some quite spectacular splashes as the truck pushed through. It is more comfortable, of course, to travel through flood waters sedately, which he then proceeded to do. Though he could still see several thunderstorms in the distance, there was no sign of the one that had dropped these particular waters.
Later on, as seems inevitable, his route intersected with the path of one of the storms that he had admired so much from a distance. Oh what violence can be sown from drops of water and molecules of air! M survived this and reached his motel at around 7:00, not too much the worse for wear, but disappointed not to be camping.
On Monday M started for home, 556 miles away. With no need to get back immediately, he planned to stop for the night along the way. He was still owed a night of camping under the stars. He drove away from Mountain Home on I-84, passed through Boise, stopped in Nampa for gas, and crossed into Oregon at Ontario. He then got off the freeway and onto U.S. 26. Two hundred miles later he reached the Ochocos where he started looking for a place to camp. There’s a nice campground at Ochoco Summit, but alas he found he couldn’t afford to stay there. It was a self service place where you choose a spot, fill out a form, and then drop an envelope of cash into a slot. With a senior discount the cost was only $10, but M couldn’t swing it–all he had was a fifty and a five. So instead he got went back to the highway and found a nearby Forest Service road that led up the side of a mountain called Dixie Dome. Plenty of places to camp up there and no other campers at all. Plus, it wasn’t raining. Also, zero other traffic.
Talk about difficult conditions, M had to make breakfast with just this much maple syrup.
After a mountainside breakfast of bacon and pancakes, M found his way back down to the highway and headed for home. Luckily, this final leg of his journey took him right past the Sisters Bakery, where he used a credit card to obtain a chocolate donut and a marionberry scone. He got back to Corvallis in the early afternoon, after a journey of 1,509 miles.
He had found Jarbidge but hadn’t explored it properly. He’ll have to go back.
Warm dry weather these days. The ground has dried out and we’ve had to start watering some things. Our new lilac is in the ground and we have high hopes, as one always does at first. To make room for it, M removed a very large cut-leaf blackberry (Rubus lacianatos) that came with us from our previous house by stowing away in one of E’s outdoor pots. It was just a six inch sprig when it got here and M found it kind of cute, so he planted it. It grew into a monster, with super abundant berries and lots of thorns. Sadly, the berries were hugely seedy and did not make good pie. The Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) is also common here. Both were originally brought here by early European-American settlers. The first wave of settlers brought the cut-leaf blackberry and later on came the Himalayan, which was considered to be a great improvement. By now, of course, breeders have created varieties that are superior to either. The old species linger on, though, because they’re tough and they like it here. We fear that we will have annoying seedlings in our yard pretty much forever.
Tuesday, May 23
Replaced the old range hood with a microwave. Finally.
Wednesday, May 24
We made a trip up to the big city today–Portlandia. We got there around 2:00 and went first to the Oregon Historical Society Museum. Here we got to see a pair of Fort Rock Sandals. The sandals are about 9,000 years old and were made from sage brush bark. Dozens of such sandals were found inside a cave in 1938 by Luther Cressman, a University of Oregon anthropologist.
The sandals were preserved under a layer of ash created by the eruption of Mt. Mazama, an ancient volcano whose crater is now holds Crater Lake.
We also saw a traveling exhibition about comedian Bob Hope that focused on his work with the USO in the Second World War. There was a short film and a host of photos and artifacts, including a suitcase that Hope used during the war. Hope performed about 150 USO shows during the war, working in both the European and Pacific theaters. Among the documents was a letter from a 19-year-old soldier in the Pacific whose unit was stationed on a remote island in the Pacific while in training for a secret mission. He wrote to his mother about much he hated it there and how much seeing Hope’s show had meant to him. A short time later the soldiers embarked on their mission, in the course of which 45% of the unit died, including the letter writer. On display is a letter written by the soldier’s mother thanking Hope for giving the boy a few hours of happiness before his life came to an end.
Before dinner we checked into the Heathman Hotel. Since May 25th is our anniversary we went next to a celebratory dinner. A&A had told us about a restaurant called Elements in Vancouver (WA). They said it was wonderful, as indeed it was. We ordered a crab and artichoke ‘fondue’ as an appetizer. It was delicious but awfully heavy. Will we ever learn not to do that? E followed that with a dish called watermelon steak, which was made from pickled watermelon served with farro, corn, shimeji mushrooms, tamarind barbecue sauce, and micro greens. It looked like this. E loved it.
Thursday, May 25
After a nice Heathman breakfast, we checked out and headed south toward Corvallis. But we didn’t go straight home…oh no. Because just south of Portland there is a shopping center and in that shopping center is E’s favorite shoe store. We stopped and E went in to see if she could find anything. She could.
Friday, May 26
Lots of yard work, errands and appointments today followed by another great meal, this time with J and R at Sybaris in Albany.
Monday, May 29
Our minds are on our respective travel plans. E is going to Buffalo to help celebrate her grand nephew’s high school graduation. She has already started to pack. M is going camping somewhere in the ‘three corners’ area, where the borders of Idaho, Nevada and Oregon meet at a nearly inaccessible spot in the Owyhee Desert. He’s still working on planning his route. Both of us are leaving on Thursday.
Tuesday, May 30
Needing exercise, we decided to take a longer walk than usual. We went to the OSU Forest and hiked the old Section 36 Loop. It was a good day to hike, cloudy and a little cool. There were still flowers to be seen…and also a lovely giant moth motionless on the ground in the middle of the trail.
R had told us that there were lots of wild iris this year. It was great to see some of them for ourselves.
Iris may be relatively abundant, but these little orange trumpets are rarer.
And here’s the moth, motionless and possibly lifeless.
Thursday, June 1
Finally it was travel day. M loaded up the truck with his camping stuff, but left enough space for E’s luggage as well. We left Corvallis at 7:30, heading for the Portland Airport. By 9:30 we were at the departure area saying our goodbyes. M then pointed himself toward Ontario, Oregon, about 375 miles away. Before she could get started, E had an appointment to meet A in the departures hall. This was so that she could take charge of a certain special item that needed to be delivered to someone in the east. Once that was done, she found her way to the plane that would start her trip to Buffalo, New York.
Friday, June 2
E attended grandnephew Henry’s graduation ceremony and the ensueing party. Congratulations Henry! Almost 100 years ago his great uncle, also named Henry Chambers, graduated from his high school in Cohoes, NY. In honor of the two Henrys, E had brought along a few old pictures of the first Henry and a copy of the program from that long ago graduation ceremony.
Back in Oregon, M left Ontario heading south, looking for the road to Succor Creek Recreation Area. But at Nyssa, Oregon he missed a turn–as he realized later–and soon found himself in Idaho amidst vast fields of sugar beets and onions. Once he realized this, he plotted a zigzag course over to where he thought he needed to be. During one of these zigs, he came upon a very large, concrete lined holding pond surrounded by chain link fence. A sign on the fence said “Dixie Drain Phosphorous Recovery Project.” With a name like that, you just know we’re going to have look it up and figure out what it was.
So the Dixie Drain is a canal. It was made over a hundred years ago to collect water run-off from a large area of farmland south of Boise, Idaho. The canal collects excess irrigation water and storm run-off. The canal eventually dumps the excess water back into the Boise River. The problem is that the run-off contains large amounts of sediment, nutrients, and other pollutants. The chief problem is phosphorous, which boosts algae production and leads to super blooms and damaged river ecosystems. Perhaps our farmers should consider reducing the amount of chemical fertilizer used on our fields. Ha-ha, just kidding. So how about a project to remove phosphorous from run-off just before it feeds into a river? That’s the idea here. When running at full capacity, the Dixie Drain facility can treat up to 130 million gallons of run-off per day, removing more than 140 pounds of phosphorus in the process. You never know what you’re going to find if you make a wrong turn…
But of course a wrong turn also needs to be righted. Five or ten miles from the Drain, M crossed back into Oregon found the turnoff for Succor Creek. Naturally, it was a gravel road and it seemed to lead off into an entirely different sort of landscape. Not much food growing out there, but not much extra phosphorous lying around either.
M had to drive 534 miles on pavement to get here, but finally he has found the right kind of road: bumpy, noisy, dusty and empty.
A few hours later he had found Succor Creek Canyon and picked out a camping spot.
M put out the solar panels to do their thing and made a shady place for himself to sit…
…but it was also nice down by the creek.
Night of Friday/Saturday, June 2/3
Saturday, June 3
About the time that M was waking up on Succor Creek, E was seeing the sights of Niagara Falls, where her nephews took her for a visit. She hadn’t been to the Falls for a while, not since she and M visited some twenty years ago. She reports that the American side of the falls, which used to be rundown and depressing, has been transformed and is now quite lovely. And you can still take a cruise on the Maid of the Mist and they still give you a free raincoat to keep you dry. The difference is that the Maid is now an electrically powered vessel piloted by a female captain.
E’s photo of the Whirlpool on the Niagara River, which is unlikely to be mistaken for Succor Creek.
Later in the day E was treated to a ride with the graduate in his immaculate 1983 Cadillac, a gas guzzling but powerful and smooth running ride.
A couple thousand miles to the west, M made a breakfast of bacon and pancakes and then immediately packed up for departure. He had big plans for the day’s driving adventure. But he also needed exercise, so right before leaving, he hiked up a nearby slope to take in the view.
M wasn’t going back out the way he came in. Instead he planned to continue up the canyon in the direction you see here.
M’s plan for the day was to travel from travel south for a bit and then head east and cross the Owyhee Mountains into Idaho. These mountain roads were primitive and–as the map notation put it–they were “not maintained in winter.” But winter was quite a ways back, technically at least, so the plan had a certain plausibility. Once on the other side of the mountains he could expect to find ranching and farming country with actual paved roads that would take him to Mountain Home, Idaho, where he planned to spend the night in a motel.
The first step was to follow Succor Creek Road as it climbed up the west slope of the canyon to reach the open country above. Once up out of the canyon, things looked very different.
Succor Creek is down there somewhere, but the road has climbed up to the top of the west rim.
Here’s the view looking west in the same area.
M continued south for some miles and eventually the sagebrush gave way (at least partially) to pastureland. The ranches were few and far between, but there were enough folks around to have an active school.
The Rockville School
M was still headed south when he passed the school, but half an hour later he had turned east onto Cow Creek Road heading toward the mountains. In the first ten miles he passed through three ranches and had to ford Cow Creek two different times. Fortunately the people who made the ford knew what they were doing and there was a firm layer of relatively smooth gravel on the bottom. Also the water wasn’t (quite) as deep as it first seemed.
We know it looks like a pond, but it’s actually a ford, one easily passable for trucks and tractors in this late spring season.
Past the three ranches the road led higher into the mountains. In that area M passed some evidence of old mining activity…
Later on he passed through the town on Silver City, which is even higher up in the Owyhees. It was a very lively place on this first Saturday in June, but a little weird and M did not linger. (For more details and photos about M’s crossing of the Owyhees, please see our upcoming post “Finding Jarbidge.”)
Sunday, June 4
For E, today’s adventure was to take the train from Buffalo, NY to Amsterdam, NY, a scenic and pleasant trip of about five hours.
Here’s a photo of a train station somewhere in New York. Can we guess what town?
Bonus points for guessing whose luggage stands abandoned in the background.
M’s daily adventure was to spend four hours driving from Mountain Home, Idaho to Jarbidge, Nevada, where he had planned to camp, but then getting rained out. Details in “Finding Jarbidge”
Monday, June 5
E spent the day in Glen’s Falls, NY. She is staying at her usual B&B there, which is operated by a certain Mrs. H–when she is not busy running the food pantry or making cookies and cakes and things. E and Mrs. H were also joined by S, another long time friend whose arrival made the party complete.
Meanwhile, it was time for M to turn toward home. Corvallis was 556 miles away and he had no need to make it all in one go. Instead he drove just 315 miles and found himself a place to camp in Oregon near Ochoco Summit.
In the depths of the night M listened to the near continuous call of a common poorwill. A western relative of the eastern whip-poor-will, the common poorwill is the only bird known to enter into a state of torpor (a.k.a. hibernation). Meriwether Lewis observed a hibernating poorwill in 1804 and recorded the event in his journal, but no one paid much attention. John James Audubon rediscovered the poorwill in 1844 and give it a name. For the Hopi people, of course, it already had a name. They live within the southernmost part of the poorwill’s range, and their name for it is hölchko, which means “The Sleeping One.”
Tuesday, June 6
Parked on the side of a mountain called ‘Dixie Dome,’ M woke early with a red sun shining in his eyes. He took this as a sign that he should go back to sleep. That didn’t last long though, and pretty soon he was up having breakfast before driving the last 200 miles back home.
E, Mrs. H and S spent most of the day laughing, only stopping long enough to take a lovely stroll along the banks of the Hudson River, where they spotted an albino robin.
Wednesday, June 7
E and Mrs. H went to Hulets’ Landing on Lake George to visit E’s brother J in his lovely hermitage. He treated them to a tour of the cabin and environs followed by a delicious luncheon, not to mention a lakeside recitation of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”
Thursday, June 8
E’s flight from Detroit was a little early. M faced long construction delays getting to Portland, and when he got to the airport the traffic was horrendous. Around 10:00 PM the pair were at last reunited. Importantly, M had stocked the vehicle with refreshments in the form of cool clear water and little capsules of Dove chocolate.
In the morning M loaded his expedition gear into the truck. At 10:30 he departed on another trip to the wilds of northern Nevada. Three hundred miles later, he still hadn’t gotten out of Oregon. But that was all part of the plan. He spent the night in Lakeview, Oregon, where he had had the foresight to reserve a room.
E, meanwhile, had more important issues to attend to. She was having her annual birthday dinner with D, a friend and former colleague. She met D at their usual place, Dulce de Alma, where they could both order small portions of delicious things. But what to wear? The weather had turned quite warm, so E treated herself to a new spring blouse.
What do we think? Is it springy enough?
Wednesday, April 26
M left Lakeview at 8:30 or so, with the remains of the previous night’s Mexican take-out tucked into his backseat fridge. Unlike the Dulce de Alma in Corvallis, El Aguila Real in Lakeview specializes in huge portions of more or less edible things, so there was plenty left over. After an hour or two of driving, he was still in Oregon, but he had gotten as far as the Doherty Slide, one of his favorite places in these parts.
Oregon 140 is almost dead straight for many miles, but then comes to a one thousand foot high barrier. The road turns right and traverses up the face.
After another hour and a half on the road M was well into Nevada and ready to get off the pavement and find a place where he could stop and eat his lunch. On the map, there was a gravel route called Knotts Creek Road. It looked promising, although just what it promised was not clear. But down the road he went. Five or ten miles in he passed a very active cattle operation.
After that, the landscape got emptier. Eventually, he came to another ranch, this one not so active.
Windmill out of order.
Kitchen not up to modern standards. And anyway…
…the house is too small for the modern consumer lifestyle. But on the plus side: no noisy neighbors, zero maintenance yard, plenty of wire, and very small chance of having a tree fall on you.
Just a mile or two past the abandoned ranch, the road enters an area called Pearl Canyon. There M found a place to stop and heat up his chile verde.
There was a rushing stream down in that low spot.
Rushing this day…probably not so rushing a few weeks from now.
After lunch, instead of going back up Knotts Creek Road to the highway, he went farther into the boonies, turning first east and then north on Leonard Creek Road. This got him back to the highway, but at a point some 40 miles beyond where he’d left it.
Buoyed by this nifty maneuver, he decided to try a similar strategy to find a place to camp for the night. He drove a little farther east and decided to head down another gravel road, this one called Sod House Road. On the map, he could see that it connected to Sand Pass Road, which would take him into some likely camping areas.
As it happened, this was not a good idea. After driving for about an hour on a not very good road, M found that his Nevada atlas and his Nevada reality failed to sync up. Sod House Road did not connect to Sand Pass Road or to anything else. All he could do was to drive back the way he had come and start all over again, with not many hours of daylight left.
M ended up stopping for the night on a hillside, overlooking a very dry looking valley.
The sunset went on forever. The night was cold.
And what was E doing on this nice April Wednesday? She was off taking pictures of flowers, picking rhubarb from our garden, and making a pie!
Last week the fawn lilies were barely starting to unfold. Now here they are in full bloom.
E also found that there were still trillium flowers around, both newish–the white ones–and oldish–the pink ones. E wonders why people can’t turn pink and pretty when they get old.
We’re pretty sure that she intended to share both the photos and the pie with M…probably.
Thursday, April 27
E started the day at tertulia with J and R, after which she attended the Zoom BBB (Better Bones & Balance) class. In the afternoon she did Laughter Yoga, and for dinner went with H and T out to Gathering Together Farm. E and T had oven baked fish with broccoli rabe and garlic herb mashed potatoes, while H had fresh pasta. Was it good? It’s always good at GTF.
M started the day by cooking bacon and eggs on his hillside and listening to a couple of meadowlarks. Then it was time to go into town to get some gas and start the homeward leg of the journey. The plan was to explore the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge with an eye toward spending the night somewhere therein. If that didn’t work out, he could always just go on back to Lakeview. What he discovered was that the reserve wasn’t exactly prepared for visitors. All the little roads to all the interesting places had suffered washouts over the winter and it was going to take time to repair them. There was no announcement about this and no one around to ask, so M had to find it out for himself by driving around and discovering the washouts one by one. That in itself was entertaining up to a point, but got old. Finally, though, he found his way to an actual place. It was called Gooch Spring.
Here’s a place where water seeps out of a hillside at Gooch Spring.
At some point someone figured out a way to get some of the seep to flow into a pipe and drip into a tank farther down the slope. By now the metal tank has taken on the colors of its surroundings.
M briefly considered camping at Gooch Spring, but there wasn’t much to look at once you’d finished with sagebrush and, at an altitude of 6,090 feet, it was likely to get pretty chilly overnight. M decided to head back.
The drive to the west provided another encounter with the Doherty Slide, this time going down the traverse instead of up. There are several YouTube videos of vehicles traversing the Slide. Here’s a link to one. The word “slide” in the name does not refer to cars or animals sliding over the edge and falling down into the valley. Instead, it probably refers to the large amount of eroded material found along the base of the ridge.
Friday, April 28
M returned home with a truck covered with dust both inside and out. Cleaning took hours, and even then the interior did not pass inspection. M got a piece of rhubarb pie anyway.
Saturday, April 29
It’s been warm for several days now–shorts weather–and flowers are blooming all over town.
Monday, May 1
Oops, it’s cold again. Time to put those shorts aside.
Tuesday, May 2
In the morning we went for a walk at the Finley Wildlife Refuge south of town. The pond on the Woodpecker Loop was as full as we’ve ever seen it. We noticed that the season has reached an important milestone: the poison oak is back! And boy is it healthy looking. One small consolation is that just when the poison oak leaves pop out, the wild irises come into bloom. They both seem to like the same conditions and are often seen close one another, though not usually this close…
Back at our house, a flicker has been coming around lately. He makes a racket by tapping on our metal chimney cover. Here he is at the feeder.
Wednesday, May 3
Lots of work in the garden today. E needed to repot her rosemary, which has been the centerpiece in her flower bed out by the front sidewalk. Last week she got a big new pot for it and today we made the change. Wasn’t easy.
In the afternoon we went for guided walk through a neighborhood that contains some of the city’s older homes. Most of houses featured on the tour were built in the period from 1890 to 1910. The oldest house, however, was the Biddle-Porter house, which was built circa 1856, making it one of earliest Corvallis homes still standing. Benjamin and Maria Biddle came to Corvallis around 1852 and had previously lived in Springfield, Illinois, where Biddle had been friends with Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer who also lived there. Apparently the friendship continued, as shown by the existence of letter from Lincoln to Biddle written in 1860 during Lincoln’s first presidential campaign.
The Biddles resided in the house until 1877. The house was then occupied by three different OSU professors before being sold to Jack Porter in 1925. It stayed in the Porter family until 2010. It is currently being restored by its preservationist owner.
Thursday, May 4
Tertulia today with J and R. Like us, they’ve been out looking at wild flowers. R has seen fairy slipper orchids (Calypso bulbosa) blooming at the Lewisburg saddle. After tertulia M worked on his drip irrigation network and pulled weeds. E did a one-hour exercise class, planted some candytuft in her old rosemary pot and then went off to the nail salon–all this well before lunch.
I was looking to do another forest road exploration, but I wanted something easy, a route that was short, easy to navigate, and not likely to feature any locked gates. This little trip filled the bill; just fifteen and a half miles off pavement, with just two or three critical junctions, all of which had clear signage. To get there I went east on US 20 through Lebanon and Sweet Home, past Cascadia and Mountain House, all the way to the turnoff for the House Rock Campground. This put me onto Latiwi Creek Road, also known as Forest Road 2044. Almost immediately I came to the access road for the campground. Ignoring that, I stayed on 2044 and followed it down into the forest.
Soon the road crossed a couple of narrow bridges and started climbing up out of the South Santiam River canyon, winding its way southeastward. The gravel was mostly smooth but had some pot holes and washboarding. The road climbed steadily and occasionally steeply. There were a number of places with views that would have been lovely if a person could have seen them through the smoke.
The smoke is probably from the Bull Complex fire, which was burning just thirty or forty miles to the north.
In a conifer forest you’re not going to see much in the way of fall colors. But there are a few spots of orange and purple, mostly in disturbed areas.
The mound of greenery in this old quarry is the result of spring that comes to the surface just in the center of the bowl. It takes lots of gravel to make forest roads and the easiest way to get it is to haul a crusher high up into the mountains and produce it there.
Even at this time of year a tiny stream runs from the spring toward the road, trying to find its way down the mountainside . At this time of year, the water will evaporate or sink into the earth again long before it reaches the river. Still, it’s quite an adventurous life these millions of water molecules are leading. Too bad we can’t put radio trackers on them and see where they show up next.
Forest Road 2044, ends at a T-junction with Forest Road 1509. I turned left and continued eastward and upward. The signage is good here. You can’t read it in this photo, but that little brown sign in the lower right points to 2044, the road I came up. It was pretty smoky at the junction and the smell of burning wood was in the air.
It may seem narrow and rough, but Road 1509 is actually a major forest route that runs east and west high up close to the ridge tops between the McKenzie River drainage to the south and the South Santiam to the north.
It’s easy to follow 1509. There are some little offshoot roads all along it, but it’s always easy to see that they are not the main road. There are three major intersections, where some fairly good looking gravel roads lead south or southeast. The junctions had good signage (see below) and all I had to do was stick to 1509.
Road 1516 is one of several routes down in to the McKenzie drainage. This one is shot up a little, but we can deduce that Highway 126 is 17 miles that way..
One of the nicer parts of 1509 is where it passes through an area of really old trees. It’s not a large tract, just a few acres alongside the road that apparently have never been logged. I decided to stop and have my lunch there. I turned onto a smaller road called Road 30 and found a wide spot to park, then walked down a ways into an old growth swale to where I could find a log to sit on.
I enjoyed the sheer height of the old trees, but I also liked seeing trees of many ages. Most of the trees in Oregon forests were born in commercial nurseries and planted as seedlings after a clear cut, thus forming large tracts of trees of identical age and size. Here in this little spot, you see trees that just happened to sprout where a seed cone fell in a year when conditions happened to be right. There are trees of all ages– two foot high tots to fifteen foot teenagers to towering elders. And the dead merely lie where they have fallen.
Eventually Road 1509 ends at another T-junction. To the right you can take Road 1598 to continue east, but I was ready to head home, so I turned left onto Forest Road 15, a paved route that leads back to U.S. 20.
Monday, July 26 Deaths 2,838 (+2) New cases 993 (#‘s include Sat/Sun)
M’s turn for the dentist. Bleh.
Tuesday, July 27 Deaths 2,643 (+5) New cases 1,032
We went to Eugene to meet our friend S for lunch. Another “first” since the Pandemic. We enjoyed her company as usual. We went for a walk in her neighborhood and had a look at the University of Oregon’s newly rebuilt Hayward Field, which hosted the recent USA Olympic Track and Field trials. Phil Knight and other donors have created a number of high end sports and recreation facilities at the U of O, including new stadiums for both men’s baseball and women’s softball as well as the Hayward Field improvements and a new student fitness center. They are all quite nice-looking as such things go, all vaguely futuristic with rather elegant artistic embellishments. Money, money, money. We had lunch at a fine little bistro just a few blocks from S’s house.
Wednesday, July 28 Deaths 2,849 (+6) New cases 804
We finally saw Hamilton, courtesy of H, who has Disney+. M dropped out after the first two hours, but E was more positive. Not only did she watch till the end, she hardly slept at all.
Thursday, July 29 Deaths 2,855 (+6) New cases 1,026
The continued hot weather makes us a bit lethargic. But for these lilies, now is the time!
Friday, July 30 Deaths 2,858 (+3) New cases 1,076
A short rain shower just after sunrise this morning. E woke M up to see it. We went out into the yard just after the rain had stopped and enjoyed the cool, fresh smell.
Saturday, July 31
Here’s another month gone, so it’s time to make another COVID curve chart. As you see, the Oregon death rate fell a little in July, reaching its lowest level since June of 2020.
The bad news is that the first half of the month was better than the second half. And in the past five days both new cases and positive test numbers have risen dramatically. Given that increases in the death rate generally lag a week or two behind increases in new case numbers, we could see some worse news in August.
Meanwhile our lives rumble along. E made a trip to the humane society thrift store. She took an old, old lamp and a new old backpacking pack. The staffer who received them was enthusiastic about them both. The lamp, she said, was “really cute” and the backpack would be “a real moneymaker.”
We’ve started watching a Spanish Netflix series called The Cook of Castamar, which is set in Madrid in 1720. The heroine is an agoraphobic young woman who, somewhat improbably, lands a position as head cook in a ducal palace. Political intrigue and sexual hijinks swirl around her, but she retains her good sense and her innocence, at least so far. She’s falling for the Duke, of course, and he is falling for her, with both of them being quite aware that there’s no way this can work.
Sunday, August 1
The weather continues hot with a high of around 95. E went for a walk in the OSU forest in the morning and then did a bunch of sorting and pre-packing for our trip to Lake George. M went off in the truck for another adventure in the mountains. His plan was to make another attempt at the route where he was frustrated by snow just a month ago. This time all was well, at least at the beginning. He went up Canyon Creek Road and continued onward and upward, stopping here and there to note items of interest.
Is this watercourse dry on the 1st of August? Not quite.
A monument near the 2026 bridge over Canyon Creek, far away from anywhere.
M followed Road 2022 up to where it ends in a T-junction with road 1509. He turned right (west) and continued upward. This was more or less familiar, but not for long. When the road began to descend, he realized he had unknowingly passed the place that had once been blocked by snow. It was a long and windy way down, but eventually he reached pavement near Blue River Reservoir and stopped for lunch on the banks of the Blue River. The water level in the Blue was pretty low but it was still pretty in the sunshine. There was a bit of a breeze blowing upstream.
From there M could have followed the pavement down to Highway 36, taken 36 to Springfield, and then taken I-5 home–a peaceful but boring two-hour trip. If he had done that, we could end this blog entry right here and move on with our lives. But of course he did not do that. Because…there was…a shortcut. If he left the pavement and headed back up into the mountains to the west on Road 1510, he would eventually go up and over and down into the Calapooia drainage. He could take the Callapooia River Road back to civilization and get home that way. It would be faster and a lot more fun. Okay!
Road 1510 turned out to be pretty nice. For a while, it ran along the top of a ridge with vertiginous drop-offs on either side.
On one side of Road 1510, this…
…and on the other side, this, with both sides plunging steeply down..
The road is generally narrow and nervous making, but there is one wide spot where a person can pull over and take some pictures.
A view from Road 1510 as it begins its descent into Calapooia canyon.
So Road 1510 was scenic and a bit arduous, but it led M onto the upper reaches of Calapooia River Road, which promised a few miles of straight, smooth gravel that would change to pavement somewhere near the town of Holley. He knew that, because he’d been on Calapooia River Road before. Oh boy!
Happily M drove along, relieved to be out of the woods (so to speak) and eager to be going home. As it happened, that was too good to be true. All too soon he came upon a sturdy steel gate barring his way. A notice informed him that the next portion of the Calipooia River road had been closed by the U.S. Forest Service. Closed? Closed!? Why? Complete USFS incompetence, of course. Didn’t they know how important it was for M to use this road? But never mind that, what to do now? It was bad. Was M going to have to backtrack for miles and miles on Road 1510, going up what he had just come down and then down what he had just come up? He’d end up going home via Springfield after all. Here he was, just an hour from home, but looking at two and a half hours to get there. Argh! In the end he found an alternative escape route. It involved going in the wrong direction for way too many miles, but it got him home in just two hours. He was in the driveway by five, his day’s work done.
The weather forecast was a day of cooler temperatures, 60’s and s70’s. That sounded like good Boxster weather, warm enough to put the top down but not so hot that the sun would broil you in your seat. The plan was to go see some roads in the Coast Range up in the northeast corner of the state. I made a lunch and was off by 10:00, heading north on U.S. 99. The first leg took us–the Boxster and me–up through the farms and vineyards of the western Willamette Valley. Just past McMinnville, U.S. 99 turns east, so we turned onto Oregon Highway 47 to continue north. It was a pleasant drive through lovely countryside, not much excitement but few annoyances. Finally, near the town of Banks, we came to Oregon Highway 8 and turned left to go into the mountains toward the coast. This was one of the roads we’d come to see.
Oregon 8 turned out to be a pretty major route. It’s a two-lane highway, but it is a mature highway, wide and well graded. There seemed to be a lot of traffic in both directions. Despite the curves, people were going pretty fast. There are a number of passing lanes on the uphill stretches, so no one had to crawl along behind a truck. The highway crosses through what is called the Tillamook State Forest. I was getting hungry, so I started looking for a place to stop, preferably some kind of park with a picnic table a little distance from the highway. I saw a sign for a campground and pulled off onto what turned out to be a very narrow gravel road that traversed down a steep slope. Yikes. Too narrow, too long and too rough. It took me about ten minutes before I managed to turn around and get back to the highway. When I got there, a heavy truck was approaching; so I had to wait for it to pass before I could pull out. Great. But very soon a passing lane appeared, which let me get around it. And then I found something odd. There were no cars visible ahead of me. Nice. I started going a little faster–not real fast because that stretch was near the crest of the coast range and was really curvy. Plenty of cars were coming from the opposite direction, but I had my side all to myself. I went up over the top and started down the other side. Still no one in front of me. So I scooted right along, letting the Boxster have a bit of fun. Where had everyone gone? I don’t know. I had fallen into an inexplicable lacuna. I was alone for quite a few miles. Finally, I came upon a line of cars and rejoined the normal world of traffic.
About then I noticed a sign that said Smith Homestead Day Use Area. This was another fortuitous event. It was a lovely place with few visitors. I ate my lunch at a wonderful secluded picnic site next to the Wilson River. As it happens, there are quite a few campgrounds, picnic areas and hiking trails in the western half of the forest. It looked like a place E and I should come back to for some camping and hiking.
The Tillamook State Forest came into being as the result of a series of terrible forest fires in the years 1935 to 1945. The 1935 fire was the worst, burning 340,000 acres of old growth timber, trees that were up to 400 years old. The fire was started during a logging operation when friction created by a steel cable rubbing against a dry dead tree caused it to burst into flame. Fanned by high winds from the east, the fire burned for eleven days. Ash from the fire drifted as far as 500 miles out to sea. The fires stopped only when the weather changed and a thick damp fog drifted in from the west.
A second fire in 1939 burned another 190,000 acres. In July of 1945 two fires combined to burn another 180,000 acres. These fires came to be the most well-known because the forests they destroyed were on either side of Highway 8, which was then the most popular route from Portland to the coast. One of the fires began on the Wilson River, caused by a discarded cigarette. The cause of the other is unknown, though some believed it resulted from a Japanese incendiary balloon.
The fires left vast areas of desolation and were a great loss to the land owners, who were mostly large timber companies. Timber companies in those days were hooked on old growth and had little interest in replanting burned over land, so they simply abandoned it. The land eventually came to belong to three Oregon counties via foreclosure for unpaid taxes. Eventually, the state legislature approved a plan to merge the county lands into a state forest and appropriated funds to begin restoration activities. Restoration involved the planting of 72,000,000 new trees over the next twenty years. Of these, about 1,000,000 were planted by students and other volunteers. Today the forest consists of 364,000 acres of fifty and sixty year-old trees. There are also a few original old growth trees that somehow survived the fires, including two or three at my luncheon spot by the Wilson River.
After lunch we continued west on Highway 8 to where it ends in the town of Tillamook. There we turned south and started the long road home.
A map of the Tillamook State Forest showing Highway 8, the route that runs through it.
The town of Tillamook, besides being famous for its cheese factory, is also home to the Tillamook Naval Air Museum. The building is a blimp hangar dating from 1943.
Twelve miles south of Tillamook lies the town of Beaver, Oregon at the mouth of the Nestucca River. The plan for the afternoon was to drive up Nestucca River Road for twenty miles or so and then turn south for twenty more miles on an unnamed mountain road that would eventually lead me to Willamina, Oregon. At that point I could get back onto a real highway and have an easy drive home. My travel guide said that the route through the mountains from Beaver to Willamina was about two thirds “two-lane paved” and one third “one-lane paved.” The one-lane part, naturally, was the middle third where the mountains were highest.
After some minor difficulty we found Nestucca River Road and headed east. The road was narrow, but it had two lanes. You could tell it had two lanes because occasionally you could see the faded remains of a yellow stripe down the middle. The first ten miles were fairly level with bucolic views of pretty little farms along the river. Then the road started climbing into the forest. It got curvier and a little narrower and there was no longer any trace of a center stripe. That was all right with us because there was hardly any traffic and the stripe had always seemed to be more like wishful thinking than anything else.
We weren’t going all that fast; well maybe a little bit here and there, but mostly not. We were just tooling along enjoying ourselves. The top was down and the temperature was perfect. How long could such an idyllic interlude continue? Not too long. A pickup truck appeared behind me, moving fairly fast. It was a smallish truck, and I couldn’t tell the make. Almost all trucks have front end brand emblems or badges. It appeared that on this truck the emblem had been removed. The truck was an odd color, a kind of beige with small slashes of a darker brown that appeared to have been applied in a regular pattern. But perhaps I only dreamt the pattern; I just got quick glimpses in the rearview mirror as we moved from sun to shade and shade to sun.
There was no way to ever pass on such a road and no place to pull over either, so we were fated to be together there for a while, that other driver and I. Eventually I decided to speed up; life would be more pleasant for both of us, I thought, if there were some space between. But that did no good. The little truck was able to pull strongly enough to keep pace. The truck seemed more at home on this sort of road and I wondered how many times the driver had been on it before. I wondered what the other driver might be thinking. Was it something like “Hey, I bet I can keep up with a Porsche on this road.” Oh dear. I decided to get serious, very serious.
We were on the “one-lane paved” section, which featured a very narrow road with lots of steep inclines and dozens of sharp curves, half of them blind curves around big pieces of mountain. Fortunately the road tended to widen just a bit at the worst of the blind curves; perhaps the makers knew what they were about. I stayed mostly in third gear, dipping into second at the sudden right angle turns and up into fourth very occasionally. (The Boxster has a six-speed manual transmission.) That kept the revs up to between 3,000 and 5,000 rpm, where the Boxster is very strong and very loud. Even though we were going mostly uphill I was braking a lot, blasting out of curves and charging up the tiniest straights before standing on the brakes for the next turn. The pickup fairly quickly disappeared behind me. The Boxster absolutely loved this kind of driving. It seemed to be laughing and yelling like a banshee. “Why,” it asked me, ” don’t we just do this all the time?” “I know it’s fun,” I answered, “but this particular thing is stupid. Just because you are so awesomely capable that I can keep keep from running off this road at these speeds doesn’t mean that we won’t run into something unexpected around one of these curves. That would be very bad.” “Fine,” said the car, as I gradually slowed down to a more reasonable pace. Alas, after a short while, shorter than I had hoped, the truck again appeared behind me. I could hear the Boxster snickering. We had to do it all over again, for real this time. I like pickups. I own a pickup. But pickups behind me bring out the worst.
So we went back into insanity mode and stayed there, cresting the mountains and heading down the other side. Gradually the road got a little wider and a little straighter, which meant we could go even faster. We met two other vehicles coming the other way, but they were no problem. We didn’t slow down until farms and houses began to appear. I was pretty much exhausted by then, all out of adrenaline. The Boxster wasn’t tired at all, but was sympathetic anyway. We never saw the little pickup again. Was it ever really there or was it just an apparition conjured up by an evil spirit of the place?
For the last few miles into Willamina the road was legitimately two lanes and there was a lot more traffic. The posted speed was 25. I noticed that the locals were going 50. It was a little disorienting. I settled on 40. By coming into the town via its back door, as it were, I passed by the largest lumber mill complex I have ever seen. Its owner, Hampton Lumber, claims that it was for a time the largest mill in the United States. I don’t think I want to see the current largest.
Here’s a satellite view of the Willamina mill. The rectangle on the left is the log storage yard. The road that comes down from the northwest and curves around the main building is the one I came in on.
From Willamina I got back onto familiar roads for a sedate drive home. Such a different world.
Between the Pacific Ocean and the Willamette valley lie the mountains of the Coast Range. There are a number of east-west routes that run through the mountains. Highway 22 connects Salem to Lincoln City via Grand Ronde. Highway 20 connects Corvallis to Newport. Between these two highways, there’s a roughly rectangular area that has no major roads. The mountains aren’t too high, but the terrain is fairly rough and the area is populated only around the edges. The climate is very wet and not terribly cold, just about perfect for growing Douglas fir. So of course that’s what we do. It’s farming country of a kind and while there are no paved roads, there are lots and lots of logging roads. Our plan was to get to the coast by traveling through this area. We’d drive west from Falls City until we reached the site of the ghost town of Valsetz, roughly in the the center of the rectangle. From there we would make our way southwest in the direction of the town of Siletz. From there we could connect to Highway 20 and Newport.
Some of the land in the coast range is part of the Siuslaw National Forest and is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, some of it is federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and the rest is owned by private timber companies. The patchwork pattern of ownership requires cooperation in the matter of road usage and some of the roads are open to the public, even when they cross miles and miles of private land. Recreational visitation on work days is discouraged–the roads are narrow and logging equipment is big–but on the weekends the loggers are gone and the roads are mostly empty.
We left Corvallis on a Sunday at 10:30 in the morning and by 11:15 we were in Falls City, where the pavement ended and the gravel began. As logging roads go, the first stretch of road west from Falls City seems like a major artery. It has only a few steep sections and is fairly wide–wide enough, in many places, for log trucks to pass each other coming and going. The day we were there, there was a fair amount of washboard.
In the years from 1919 to 1983, this was the chief access route to Valsetz, a logging town that was established by a lumber company called Cobbs and Mitchell. Cobbs and Mitchell was a Michigan company, but by the early 1900’s Michigan had no more old forest left to cut. Looking for new horizons, the company acquired large tracts of virgin timber along the upper reaches of the Siletz River in Oregon.
In earlier times, loggers had lived in isolated logging camps, sleeping in company-provided tents, eating company provided food, and being away from their families for months at a time. In 1919 that era was passing. To harvest the upper Siletz, William Mitchell built a rail line into the area and created a semi-permanent company town. In addition to setting up a sawmill, the company built individual homes for workers and their families, set up company stores, and established a K-12 school. A dam was built to create an artificial lake to serve as a log pond. A post office opened in 1920. Mill workers could walk to and from work and logging crews could make daily commutes to the harvest areas via the company railroad.
All of the land and all of the structures in the town were owned by the company. In 1924 Cobbs and Mitchell sold the entire operation to a new entity called the Valsetz Lumber Company. In 1959 the operation was sold again, this time to the Boise Cascade Corporation. Over the years the town’s population fluctuated between 300 and 1,000 inhabitants. In 1974 the Valsetz High School football team won an Oregon state championship.
By 1979, however, the old growth forest in the area was depleted and the company decided to shut down the Valsetz mill. After the shutdown all the structures of the town were removed and the area was replanted with fir trees. In 1984 the railroad was torn up and in 1988 the dam was removed and the lake was drained. Today, there is no obvious signs that the town ever existed.
We arrived at the Valsetz site at 12:30. Navigation had been easy so far, as we had had GPS location data on a forest road overlay of a satellite photo. The road to Valsetz is pretty easy to follow even without a map, but once we were actually in the area we found a couple of intersections where the GPS was helpful.
It’s still possible to deduce where the lake used to be. It is now crowded with ten and twenty foot tall trees, but the trees are clearly the product of natural reseeding, mostly deciduous and still not too large. The road splits at one point, with one fork going to the left going along the south side of the old lake and one fork to the right going along the north side. That northern road leads past the only obvious remnant of the project–the concrete and steel floor of the old sawmill.
Here are two maps of the Valsetz area. The first shows the old lake as it was and how the road coming in from the east gets complicated as it splits into northern and southern forks. The dam was in the narrow section at the north end of the lake. The town was lower down in the east side of the lake.
Part of the northern road was named Cadillac Avenue in honor of the city in Michigan where the Cobbs and Mitchell Company had its headquarters.
The next map is a relatively recent satellite photo of the same area. The rough outline of the lake is still visible in the form of the lighter color foliage that grows in the old lake bed. (The very lightest colored areas, though, are recent clearcuts.)
After touring back and forth a bit to get oriented, we sat down inside the old sawmill foundations and had our lunch. When it was time to leave, we had to choose our route out of the forest. Our GPS compatible map had been nice, but Valsetz was at its extreme western edge and no similar map was available for the next part of the route. We had some print maps and these showed two possible routes. The road on the north side of the old lake led northwest from Valsetz before it eventually looped back down to the southwest, which was where we needed go. The road from the south side of the lake seemed to more directly in a southwest direction, but in its lower reaches it also looked to be somewhat complicated, providing abundant opportunities for making a wrong turn. So off to the north we went, leaving Valsetz just at the spot where the dam had been, following the outlet creek. On our map, that creek appears to be the headwater of the South Fork of the Siletz River.
The road was very different from the one we had come up on, narrower and less well maintained. In the upper reaches it was quite beautiful, often cutting across forested slopes giving us glimpses of fantastic deep ravines. The road had a gravel base, but it was old gravel and there were potholes wherever the road was level. There were lots of unmarked intersections. We navigated by trying keep a sense of where the main stream must be.
It was a long, slow descent, basically just following the path of the Siletz River, which is shown below. At the top of the map the South Fork coming up from old Valsetz merges with the North Fork. (Only a tiny portion of the North Fork is visible.) Just past the confluence point, the river starts to turn down toward the southwest. There are dozens of small tributary creeks and the river becomes steadily larger as it flows south. The larger it got, the easier it was to see that we were on the right road. Eventually we passed through the Siletz Gorge and finally came out of the mountains at Upper Farm, which is in the bottom left corner of the map. At this point we were back on pavement and headed for civilization.
In the northern part of the route, the terrain is rugged and the trees are thick enough so that an occasional clearcut is a welcome change. Lower down, the Siletz Gorge is a potentially wonderful place, but these days it is marred by intensive recent logging. In the photo below we have stopped at a place where one side of the gorge is currently covered with young trees, maybe five or six years old. New clearcuts are of course much uglier.
Some parts of the gorge are fine. Here’s a view from the road, looking down river.
In the same place, looking back from where we came.
At another wide spot in the road these stacks of logs had been piled up and then abandoned, some of them recently, some of them a long time ago.
Now that we know this route, we can take it over to the coast anytime, provided that we’re not in a hurry. It does add four hours to the trip.
Busy morning. We did our shopping and met with a contractor about a bathroom remodel. Later, M looked at the photos from his trip into the forest on Sunday.
Over time, even a giant galvanized steel culvert can start to blend in.
Lots of logging going on. The trees are harvested every forty or fifty years, so if a company owns forty or fifty thousand acres, they can harvest a thousand acres a year, and call it sustainable.
Could be almost anything on the other side of that hill. Better check it out. Try out the truck’s four wheel drive.
The area in the center is a landing, the place where logs are cut to length and loaded onto trucks. The black circle is the site of a slash burn. M went down to the landing in the truck to check it out. It was okay.
It’s always a shock to run across the clearcut when you’re driving through the forest. But after the shock, there is one positive. Clearcuts provide an opportunity see the lay of the land. Also, it’s not really a forest; it’s a farm. More on that some other time.
Tuesday, April 27 Deaths 2,488 (+2) New cases 740
Beautiful summery day. M worked in the yard for most of it. E had exercise class and a medical appointment. She is getting annoyed at all these appointments, but is working on solving the mystery of a foot problem that won’t go away. Later, in the TV world, we got big news about Melek! First of all, Melek isn’t her real name. The real Melek was her younger sister, who committed suicide. So what is our heroine’s actual name? We don’t know. We’re still in shock. Her family doesn’t know about this, but Özan and Raven have stumbled across it. But what does it all mean?
Wednesday, April 28 Deaths 2,490 (+2) New cases 888
E had another medical thing this morning while M had a long FaceTime meeting regarding editorial changes to the paper he is collaborating on. Satisfying the series editor is boring work. M’s next assignment is to write an abstract. Oh boy.
We watched a bit more of 20 Minutes, the show about Melek who isn’t really Melek. We were hoping to find out what it all means. We didn’t. E had a short nap halfway through.
Thursday, April 29 Deaths 2,491 (+1) New cases 928
In the morning, Eve had her exercise class. M worked on his article abstract. He ended up writing two different versions, one serious and one parody. This was necessary, he says, to prevent the universe from getting out of balance.
After lunch we made a trip out to Dancing Oaks Nursery in search of native plant starts. It wasn’t easy, but by golly we did find some. Dancing Oaks is tucked back in the foothills northwest of here in the general vicinity of Peedee, Oregon. Lovely spot at the end of two miles of narrow, high-crowned gravel road.
For dinner we tried out some Beyond Beef brand sausages that M prepared with grilled peppers and potatoes per request. The plant-based sausage was pretty tasty, and had a nice texture.
Friday, April 30 Deaths 2,495 (+4) New cases 990
It’s the 400th day of Pandemic Diary record keeping, time for another chart. Average deaths per day were slightly higher in the most recent ten-day period, but still relatively low as compared to the last six months.
Who were the idiots who went and bought all those ridiculous plants yesterday? Easy work, buying. But what about planting? We both spent much of the today in the yard, bending over with hot sun on our backs. What for? Because we have a vision! (A lot of troubles in this world have been caused by people with visions.)
Saturday, May 1 Deaths 2,498 (+3) New cases 794
A good day for a leisurely breakfast followed by a look through the local newspaper–which just barely manages to exist but which we still appreciate. After that, E went off to visit her friend S, who may or may not be going to move to back to the midwest to live near her sister and brother-in-law. Nothing is quite clear. E didn’t get to see Pepper, who is off visiting a dog sitter for a few days. M stayed home and put up a wall mount for our television. The instructions made sense and all went well, the only real glitch being that the kit included only three of the four big lag screws that the instruction sheet promised. Grumbling mightily, M had to go off and look through his fastener collection to see if he could find something suitable. He found a lot of really big lag screws, all of them far too big, but wait, there amongst them was an almost perfectly sized one. Where it came from, no one knows, but it sufficed. The next step is to rearrange the living room–or not–to take advantage of the TV on the wall.
After lunch, E walked to the store to get some pastries for Sunday breakfast and M went off in the truck to get a bag of pumice rock that E needed for her patio decor project. Dinner was Asian Fusion from Magenta and TV was The Vineyard on Prime. Nice change of pace, a bit faster than the 20 Minutes series.
In local COVID news, deaths may be down but confirmed cases are up, so the governor has reinstated the ban on in-restaurant dining in many areas, including all of the biggest cities in the state. Roughly a third of all Oregonians have been fully vaccinated and already demand is down. Corvallis is now running walk-in vaccination clinics for anyone sixteen and above.
A church in a nearby town is being sued by the parents of a church member who died of COVID. They say that their daughter contracted the disease at a church service where the congregants were packed closely together. Video shows that there was a lot of singing and that no one wore a mask, this despite the fact that there had been known positive cases among the membership. Sigh.
Sunday, May 2 Deaths 2,501 (+3) New cases 756
Not a whole lot of activity today, which is of course excellent. We did a little garden work, and E visited her friend P.
We have not been doing a very good job of identifying all these new plants, so we made some new, easy-to-read tabs.
There was a minor crisis in the front garden. We caught E’s new blue hen escaping through a gap in the fence. Luckily we noticed in time.
