Tuesday, August 30. 

It's 3:00 am and I'm sitting at a picnic table basking in the glow of my iPad in an RV park on the Snake River somewhere in eastern Oregon.  I hope to be more precise about where we are before long. There's no wi fi hereabouts, no cellular, no representation of our location on any of the four maps we've consulted. Actually it may be 4:00 am. We may be in a new time zone -- a sign says "Showers absolutely will be locked at 10 pm Mountain Time." We're here because Scotty, of Scotty's Recreational Supplies/Deisel, told us last evening we'd better stop driving because "the deer take over the roads about now." 

Sunday night we stayed at the Union Creek campground in the Blue Mountains just outside Baker City, Oregon. After we asked our series of idiotic questions, the camp host suggested we might enjoy a movie called "RV," starring Robin Williams.  I was able to stream it only on the smallest of my seven available electronic devices. We fell asleep squinting at the tiny screen, watching Robin driving too close to a tree and tearing off his vehicle's awning, becoming drenched by a shower of fecal matter while trying to dump his tanks, etc.  The next morning it was time for us to -- you guessed it -- dump our tanks for the first time.  We aced it.

Monday we arrived promptly at 9 am at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center outside Baker City, situated high in the hills above the rutted remnants of the trail itself.  

In the 1840's more than 300,000 pioneers embodied our Manifest Destiny, following the trail nearly 2,000 miles from Missouri to the promised land around Oregon City. They persevered through heat, wind, rain, and mud to pursue a dream.

Kate among the pioneers

Inspired, Kate and I decided to pursue our own dream. We made the 3 mile round trip hike in 90+ degree heat from the Interpretive Center to set foot in the actual ruts of the Oregon Trail.  

Ruts in the foreground are remnants of
    the original Oregon Trail. Structure at the
  top of the hill is the Interpretive Center,
where we started and ended our hike.

Our rig is just about twice the size of the wagons that traversed the Oregon Trail (18 feet vs. 9 feet long)

Returning to the center to watch a film, we learned that elderly types weren't highly valued on the trail back in the day. Couldn't pull their weight. "Elderly" meant over 50.

Wednesday, August 31. 

As we decamped Tuesday morning (after my 3 am blogging vigil), we discovered we had spent the night in a campground in Copperfield, OR. Copperfield doesn't exactly exist anymore, but the local namesake utility company operates an RV park on the banks of the Snake. We didn't cover much ground Tuesday, traveling 70 miles of winding mountain road from Copperfield to Joseph, OR -- named for the famous Nez Perce chief who refused to sign the "Steal Treaty" with the U.S. in the 1850's. 

The mountain road offered some interesting obstacles.

Half way to Joseph, we stopped at Hell's Canyon Overlook, commanding a dramatic view of the canyon carved for 2 million years by the Snake River, through rock compressed from magma for over 300 million years. The Overlook was a favorite attraction for pioneers heading westward on the Oregon Trail.

You meet a lot of interesting people on the road, but you tend to meet them for five minutes and then move on. Yesterday we encountered a man whose grandfather was a 6 foot 9 inch Catalonian who migrated to El Salvador, lived to be 118 years old, and died from being hit by a car; a woman who lives near Portland in the winter and drives a shuttle bus in Joseph in the summer; a motorcyclist who photographs his "buddy rock" with "Gary" painted on it wherever he travels to honor his deceased friend; a couple who photographs their two dogs in front of whatever notable sights they encounter in their travels. Ever the sentimentalist, Kate said "All we have to photograph is each other. We should get a rock."

Last night we camped at beautiful Lake Wallowa, outside of Joseph.

Today we took a little hike. I like to walk -- in fact I've walked 50 miles a week every week for six years. As long as it's flat and at sea level, I'm your guy. The ranger here assured us that today's hike (Chief Joseph Trail) was an easy, flat hike around the lake. The trailhead is "just up the road,"she said. During our two mile walk uphill on the road at 5,000 feet elevation, I got my first clue about what lay ahead.

Finally arriving at the trailhead, there was more interesting news.

There was also a sign warning of wild goats that "may become aggressive," and who "crave the salts found in human sweat and urine." There was no mention of how they go about satisfying these cravings.  The trail itself was only a mile and a half long, but was steep by my standards and offered some challenges -- but no wild goats, at least.

The trail.

A nicer part of the trail.

Partial view of Lake Wallowa from the trail.

Hiking aside, we like it here at Lake Wallowa and we're staying a night longer than we planned.

Saturday, August 27. The last day of our first full week away from home.

Up at 5:30 am in Ashland. Packed, stopped in Medford for a lengthy encounter with the blood lab at the local hospital, attempting to fill an order from my doc in Palo Alto. Failed. On to Fred Meyer to pick up a few groceries for lunch  and  dinner.  Stopped at Starbucks to break my fast for the fasting blood test that never happened. So. Up at 5:30, on the road at 10:30. A quick five hour departure from Ashland. Next stop, Crater Lake, Oregon.

At Crater Lake we found a place to park in the woods and dined on pb&j sandwiches in the rig. Then: A spectacular sight.

For those of you unaware of the internet as an information source, a few factoids about Crater Lake:

6 miles wide

Almost 2 miles deep

4.9 trillion gallons

The bluest lake in the world (so they say)

The crater was formed almost 8,000 years ago when Mount Mazama erupted, sending 12 cubic miles of magma skyward and covering what is now the entire U.S. Northwest with ash two feet deep. The eruption was more than 100 times greater than that of Mt. St. Helens in 1980.  

This visit  has been therapeutic for me. I now have a new worry to take my mind off global warming.

On to La Pine State Park on the Deschutes River, where we spent our first night actually camping in  the motorhome.  We were greeted by Debbie and Don, our camp hosts with an RV roughly the size of Texas.

Dinner was delicious pasta and  salad en plein aire.  

After dinner we decided to walk to the river, about 200 feet from our rig. On the way we met 10-year-old Grace, who vigorously offered to show us the best place to see the river. We followed her on foot for about two miles to a steep slope full of brambles. Grace hopped off her bike and loped down to the river in her flipflops and shorts with us picking our way gingerly behind. Then she turned to us and said, "I LOVE being a kid!" She probably rethought that when her mother grounded her for disappearing without telling anyone (except us).

Kate and Grace

Sunday morning. Packed up at 7:00 am, got breakfast at the justly famous Jake's Diner in Bend, drove 20 miles looking for a scenic overlook that apparently doesn't exist, realized I had left a small RV part on the  ground at the  campsite, looked up the nearest RV parts store, backtracked 15 miles and found it to be closed on Sundays, located another one, got the part, and were underway by noon. We sensed a pattern emerging -- the five hour departure.

Jake's

Breakfast for Two

Today we progressed toward Montana. Still in Oregon, we passed through John Day Fossil Beds National Monuments, Painted Hills Unit. Unique and beautiful hills striped softly over many millennia with layers of cerise and green pastels. Fossils included ancient rhino bones.

More driving ahead -- Idaho tomorrow.

We've been in Ashland, Oregon for the past few days, staying with our old friends Bert and Nancy. Ashland is the home of the famous Shakespeare Festival, and home to many adorable deer who roam the town's residential neighborhoods. The locals refer to them fondly as "rats with hooves."  For the first time in dozens of trips here, we haven't seen a single play. It's become an unplanned R&R stop after the rigors of preparing to acquire an RV, getting the house ready for renters, figuring out how an RV works (not), and packing for a year in a closet the size of a thimble.

Our visit with Nancy and Bert has been relaxing and pleasant and mostly very kicked back. Kate and I accompanied Bert to his writer's group the other day. Several accomplished local writers get together regularly to read their works-in-progress aloud and critique each other's work. Readings that day included a quirky piece about a woman in a bathtub conversing with a drip of water shaped like Jesus (it was really good, but I sense I may not be doing it justice with my description). Notably, the writer of this piece was my high school girlfriend Deborah whom I haven't seen for 50 years and who turns out to be in Bert's writing group. Somewhat to my chagrin, she apparently has had a rich and fulfilling life without benefit of my further intervention. Worse, she looks pretty much the same as she did in high school. Humbling. Which reminds me, I recently won an award for being humble.....

My Award

Writer's Group. Third from left-Kate. Fifth from left-Bert. Far right-Deborah.

But back to the writer's group. Another reading was from a novel-in-progress about an elderly couple traveling the country in an RV. Their experiences include running into a tree, hitting a deer, being attacked by a bear, and sort of adopting a pregnant hitchhiker and her dog. 

After the writer's gathering, Kate went with Nancy to a meeting of Nancy's women's discussion group. Kate met several women there, including one who recently acquired an RV. She and her husband took an overnight trip in it, found that they were clueless as to how all the systems worked, saw a bunch of threatening looking warning lights blinking, and returned home early. 

The RV karma could be better.

We wrapped up our stay in Ashland with cocktails at the home of Deborah and her husband Herb. 

                       Nancy, Bert, Kate, Deborah, Don


Now we're off to a guitar festival in Montana, via the wilds of central Oregon and northern Idaho. We've just heard we've been accepted as volunteers at the Festival -- Sarah is volunteering too.

After several attempts to track our trip through "so easy anyone can do it" map tracking apps, gadgets, and software, I have opted for what I like to call the "analog approach." Here's the first edition.

Two days out and already major events have transpired. After a terrific send-off by our friends Cheryl and Mid at a farewell brunch, we set out for Eureka to meet up with Kate's niece Melissa and her husband Nate. We had a pleasant, uneventful trip north. No sooner had we arrived than we acquired a new fellow traveler -- a very friendly 5-year old mastiff named Burt Reynolds.* We think Burt will be the ideal companion on our adventure. It's a long story.....

Burt Reynolds

Burt and Kate get to know each other

We stayed the night in our rig after a dinner of home made pizza and chicken soup with Melissa and Nate.  The next day we visited the two cafes owned by Melissa and her partners -- the Beachcomber Bayside and the Beachcomber Trinidad. We had a great lunch at one of the Beachcombers and then hiked at Trinidad State Beach with Melissa.  

Adorning the Beachcomber Bayside is a statue fashioned by Melissa from scrap metal and other castoffs. Melissa is working on a larger, more elaborate version now -- destined for Burning Man (bringing Woman to Man, says Melissa)

A great visit. We look forward to seeing Melissa and Nate in Palo Alto sometime soon. Now we're off to Ashland, Oregon.

*Just kidding about the dog. I offered to rent Burt Reynolds for the year, but Melissa turned me down flat.

Steinbeck wrote in Travels With Charley, 

     "A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to
      be wrong is to think you control it. All plans, 
      safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless.
      We do not take a trip; a trip takes us."

In that spirit, we embark on our year untethered. Our trusty conveyor will be a 2005 Airstream Westfalia motorhome - just 18 feet long and packed full with most of our worldly possessions. Determined to have no illusions of control, we start our adventure with no plans. If you have no plans, there's nothing to control, right? 

If and when we come upon something of interest, I'll write about it here. 

We're off!