Saturday, Sunday = Edgefield
When I’m in the Portland metroplex doing my van thing I always take I-205 (the Portland beltway) to get from here to there in the burbs, but today I’m in no hurry and it’s Saturday, and 205 always sucks, so I decide to go overland. There is a Trader Joe’s in the eastern ‘burbs on the way to Edgefield, so I plan an overland route from my western ‘burbs to there. Quite interesting. I end up driving along the west side of the Willamette River for a while. It’s a big river, and Portland has some really swank areas on the west side.
I do my TJ’s thing, then continue the overland theme to sneak up on Edgefield from the rear – no freeways! I book my $34 hostel bed, start hanging out, and get so excited I go ahead and book tomorrow night also. So Labor Day weekend is solved! I will hang out at adult Disneyland till the whole three-day weekend thing blows over. Eat, drink, soak at the soaking pool, dig the loud, drunk wedding party on Saturday night, dig the concert crowd on Sunday night (really deeply boring music, whoever it was, but the excitement was fun), wifi my little heart out, and that’s that. Everything was pretty perfect until the second night at the hostel, when very late in the night (early in the morning actually) some really drunk and loud fool came in and fumbled for a literal 15 minutes trying to figure out how to open and shut his locker. A deep voiced fellow on an upper bunk finally threatened to come down and clean the guys clock if he didn’t quiet down. The desk says that happens on concert nights – people stumble in saying dude, I’m way too drunk to drive home, so they book ’em a bed in the hostel – good to know…
I spent a good chunk of my time there buried in maps and my trusty camping app planning the next three weeks. I know that I want to end up on a particular hot springs-chocked road in Idaho, but how to get there? I decide to save a few miles by going more or less straight there through northern Oregon rather than curving up into southern Washington as I did last time. Then I roughed out the days, and I think I can do a pretty ambitious loop through Yellowstone, into Colorado and back through mind-blowing southern Utah, and still be back in time for Martha’s visit (turned out the plan was a little too ambitious…)
The near-term decision was to not mess around at the local Columbia River wonders – Multnomah Falls, scenic river overlooks, Hood River, those places. The Multnomah Falls parking was super, duper crowded that Labor Day Monday, so good call on that. Since I wasn’t doing the usual Oregon-side attractions, I crossed the river at Cascade Locks, over a very cool old metal bridge where you can see the river underneath – reminded me of the college mescaline days in Louisville, where we would drive back and forth across the bridge looking down through the corrutaged steel to the river far, far below. The Washington side is slower and curvier and a lot quieter. It was kinda cool to look across the river at all the hurly-burly of Hood River (crazy kite surfing and wind surfing scene on the river).
Today’s drive was beautiful, but I felt pretty frazzled, I took many occasions to curse the a-hole who kept us up last night at the hostel. Especially when I stopped 60 miles down the road and reached for the Oregon Geology book and realized I left it on the front veranda of Edgefield. Oh fiddlesticks!
SR 74 is a pretty drive, through dry grassy valleys that look very much of the Palouse region of eastern Washington a hundred miles north, although the geology book says they are not. The only notable civilization on the whole route was Heppner, and it wasn’t much. Right after it however was a little lake with a campground that I for some reason drove right past. It looked like a real nice place … why didn’t I stop? Another sign I’m frazzled, I make bad decisions.
Onward to my destination, Cutsforth Park, a little county-run campground. About 8 miles before it, the terrain changed from open grassy hills to crowded pine forest hills, which would have been a relief in the middle of a sunny day, but not so much late on a day when I’m pretty gloomy anyway. It seemed quite dark and depressing and I wished I’d stopped at the wide-open lake campground.
Tuesday
My dank little hollow of a campsite was actually pretty sweet in the morning once the sun came over the hills and hit my spot, so to speak. I did my tai chi, and my chi gung, then I gunned the van up the short but steep incline to successfully escape.
The road – SR 244 from Heppner through Ukiah to Baker City has some quite dramatic vistas at a few points, but it was not, for me, at this time, really worth the effort it took to wend my way through it. If I could do it over I would’ve simply taken I-84 to Baker City and had 70% of the scenic-ness for 30% of the effort… live and learn…
The Baker City Library had excellent wifi, where I firmed up my near-term plans. The road out of town is very pretty. I had done it a decade before in a previous trip, so it was somehow deeply meaningful. Right outside Baker is the Oregon Trail Museum, which is a cool place, but which kinda bums me out. I love Lewis and Clark memorabilia – they were far-thinking people who at least tried to get along with the Indians. Their voyage means discovery to me. But Oregon Trail folks are coming to take land that already has people on it. Their voyages mean genocide to me.
Anyway most of the route follows a little river through canyons and cow pastures on its way to the big ole Snake River. This really is a beautiful, if tiring drive. The canyons are quite steep and dramatic at times, and there are two distinct big, wide, peaceful farming valleys between the steep canyons. Very prosperous and very remote. This whole corner of the state feels like Idaho, even though it’s still Oregon.
Got to my Idaho Power campground on the Snake right below the Oxbow Dam, Quite a pleasant location – on a point created on one side by the the big ole Snake River, and on the other by the cute little river I followed halfway from Baker City (from a town actually called Halfway, OR :)). Idaho Power has water to burn, so there’s a huge grassy lawn to hang out on. So I’m sittin here by the river, watchin the mountain to the east turning red and the sky over the mountain to the west gettin a little pink also – life is good.
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