Morrow County

I believe when I looked up the top things to do in Morrow County, getting gas at the Shell station just off the freeway is in the top three.  Rounding out the list...tipping cows and kissing cousins.  Actually, that may have been Joey Morrow.

On the day of our visit the wind wasn’t too bad considering how many windmills mark the drive along the interstate.  The sun was shining as we pulled into the Shell gas station at the Boardman exit. I was hoping to stretch the gas interval to nearby Pendleton but a split second decision pulled me off the interstate.  Upon arrival, the dog declared his presence to all who dared smell his urine.  Bugs picked up in other counties were squeegeed off the windshield and our lunch debris was left in the trash as a sign that we'd been there.

This Morrow is home to around 11,700 people, covers a little over 2,049 square miles and the highest point is 1,900'.  The county seat is located in the city of Heppner.  Wheat farming and growing cows is what goes on there.  There's a coal plant that is showering the area with mercury and also a munitions dump with bunkers of deteriorating canisters of nerve gas.

Actually today I was told by someone in the know that there is a nice beach near the Port of Morrow and trails for biking.  I may return to Morrow County!

Lake County

Lake County has been billed as 'Oregon's Outback'.  Much in the way that Coos Bay calls itself 'the bay area'.  In case you are unfamiliar with Oregon geography, Lake County covers a large area that borders California and a bit of Nevada , east of Klamath Lakes and a long drive from the Cascade Range.  Lakeview is the county seat and other notable towns include Christmas Valley and Fort Rock.  It is very rural, has mountains and lakes, as well as sagebrush.             


My trip to Lake County was to a place called Hole in the Ground with my brother, who was visiting from Massachusetts.  As any respectable Oregonian would do, I take my visitors to exotic locales, such as Hole in the Ground.  Actually we were fishing at Crane Prairie Reservoir and it was too windy to keep trying.  It was too early to return to the cabin we were staying in at Diamond Peak so we pulled the map out and this sounded interesting.    


Hole in the Ground is off Highway 31 about 30 miles east of Highway 97 and a few miles in on a dirt road; near Fort Rock.  It's a large volcanic hole 300 feet deep and a mile wide.  Nearby H in the G is Big Hole, which is a similar feature, but I understand is full of trees, whereas this is mostly devoid of trees, except for the east side, where the above picture was taken.  This is in a very rural part of the high desert (approximately 4300' above sea level) surrounded by sagebrush.  


At the bottom, it looked like the site of some ritualistic activity, there was a large dirt circle at the center of the bottom of the hole.  We hiked down to investigate.  What we found was a 55-gallon metal drum full of trash and had been a burn barrel in a former life.  Quad tracks were all around the barrel with trails heading off to the the rim at several points.  The rusted barrel contained cans, bottles, and some old circuit boards.  And it was absolutely riddled with bullet holes.  We found hillbilly Utopia!  It was a nice hike without a soul in sight.  

Wasco County

On a sunny Friday morning in June, a long drive to Northeastern Oregon I had planned was about to begin.  The trip itself had been in the balance because my son came down pneumonia and strep throat the prior week and it was lingering.  He had been getting better but earlier in the week he was backsliding and nearly missed the entire last week of school.  He did manage to make that last day of school and so we decided the trip was a go. 

We didn’t really have a route planned out, nor did we have a plan other than campsite reservations at Wallowa Lake State Park.  We packed up most of the van on Thursday evening and Friday only had to gas up and buy food for the trip before we could hit the road. We did not leave until almost 10 AM and I was getting restless.  We took Interstate 5 north to Interstate 84 to get gone as quick as possible.

A little history: My wife Marla’s grandparents moved from Detroit, MI to The Dalles in the 1940’s or so.  Her grandfather was a doctor who loved to fish and hunt and this was the perfect place for that.  They had one of the nicer houses in town.  Back when they lived there, there was no interstate and the main connection to the big city of Portland was the very scenic US 30, along the Columbia Gorge.  Her grandparents are gone and there is no longer any relatives living in The Dalles, so I had never seen the house where her mom grew up, or where she herself spent many a holiday or summer vacation growing up.  

I thought it would be a worthwhile stop on our trip to see this place that had a hand in shaping my wife and her family.  As we approached the freeway exit, Marla was becoming increasingly emotional at the thought of seeing the place she hasn’t seen for close to 20 years.  And of course her getting teary was affecting me.  We parked on a sidestreet.  I was expecting something a little more pastoral than what it was.  We were about a block from Fred Meyer shopping center.        

I learned that day that The Dalles has grown a lot since Marla played there as a girl.The house her grandparents owned once had lots of open space for kids to explore and run around.  Now there is an assisted living center and other developments where she used to frolic.  She had no desire to knock on the door and see the inside of the house.  The physical house held little appeal. The stop was good to do as sort of a cathartic experience, and I got to hear stories I hadn’t heard before and gave the kids an idea of how she grew up. 

We stopped at the local DQ for lunch and headed back out on the freeway to continue our trip. While driving through downtown I discovered that I had actually stopped in The Dalles the prior year to eat lunch at a Burgerville while passing through.    
    

Multnomah County

At my office, there is a pool of cars that you have to reserve in advance of when you need one and sometimes they are all booked up. That was the case on a cold day in February for a meeting I had to go to in Portland, earlier this year. However, the Amtrak Cascades train has pretty regular service from Eugene to Union Station in downtown Portland. It is close to my office and the departure/arrival worked in my favor. It was great. I got work done. The scenery was good. The train was on time. And when the kids heard I took the train, they all chanted "NO FAIR!"

I like making things a surprise. It's hard to have expectations when you don't know the plan. So how can you be disappointed when you have no expectations? That is my logic and it may be flawed.

Surprise Spring Break train trip with Marla and the kids! I called it my 'secret plan'.  My original secret plan was to wake them at 4 am and take the 5 am train, but Marla voted that down. Too much packed in for a good time. So the 9:00 train it is! The train was on time and just as scenic. The kids didn't seem as excited with the train and I was hoping they would be. I tried to roll with it.  

We arrived on time shortly before lunch and went directly to Byways Café for a great lunch right off the train. I have been there several times for breakfast and loved it. The place is decorated with kitschy souvenirs; mainly tourist trap plates. During our lunch some really good music from the Kinks was on and very good diner food was provided.

Then we wandered over Powell’s Books and spent hours browsing before taking the streetcar to the tram which goes over the freeway and connects to Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU). We were hoping for a snack or hot chocolate up there but the hospital café was closed by the time we arrived.

We went back down the tram and walked along the river and had a snack at the Riverplace Hotel. The weather was pretty good for March but started feeling too chilly when the snacks finally arrived.

Our train was due to head home around 9 pm and we still had a bit of walk back to Union Station. The kids wanted Italian for dinner and we a nice Italian restaurant with a family connection to Beppe and Gianni’s in Eugene. We had a long wait getting a table (over an hour on a Monday night) but dinner was very nice. Evan gave up meat for Lent and he got some candy from the waitress for being such a good boy. At the train station, we discovered that our scheduled train killed a pedestrian in Washington so we had to take a bus back to Eugene. We got home around midnight and we were grateful for no school or work the next day.

The train is a great way to travel and Portland is easy to maneuver without a car and in many cases is easy without a car. The streetcar is free in fareless square (as are buses and MAX trains) and the tram is $4 round trip.

Can't Just Sit Around the House!

My brother came to visit me in May. He was a little down in the dumps and I was hoping to clear his mind. We decided that heading up to the mountains would help clear the cobwebs. The exact moment for this idea came when my brother & I were driving away from Hole in the Ground in Lake County. I started thinking about some of the other places in Oregon I have visited so far this year. And a bunch places I have not been to for many years or have never visited in the 18 years I have lived in Oregon. Would I be able to visit all 36 counties in Oregon in 2010?

I decided to throw the gauntlet down. On myself. And in order to keep track of it, I thought I may as well keep a blog as a diary of sorts to measure my success. By my reckoning I have visited 7 counties as of June 14th: Benton, Klamath, Lake, Lane, Lincoln, Multnomah, and Yamhill.

My hope is this blog will keep me from staying home weekends all summer. Every other week I am blessed with 3 day weekends. On top of that, I anticipate my job will require meeting with folks on the Oregon Coast and also southern Oregon to help with this ambitious plan.

My journal will include the counties I have already visited, as well as updates for new counties under my belt. The hardest to do will be on the eastern part of the state due to how long it will take to travel there. I believe Wallowa County, for example, is at least 8 hours away each way. For the record, Terminal Gravity Brewery is there!