Road trip to Eastern Oregon
December 1, 2009

What follows is a “brief” summary of my Road trip to Eastern Oregon. I apologize in advance for its length, history lessons, and bad humor, but I thank you for taking the time to read it.

Saturday afternoon, after refueling our ride and packing it with supplies (drinks and snacks, mostly), we departed the Portland-Metro area. It was 47° F out and raining in torrents, and the sky was gray and thundering; not the best weather for traveling.

Our first scheduled stop was Rooster Rock State Park. However, due to the rain, and the fee associated with “using” the park, we turned around in the park’s driveway to return another day to unravel the mystery behind the park’s name (I have my suspicions.)

Close to the park was Bonneville Dam, the most popular dam for school and scout outings for Clackamas County residents, or so I assume since I had visited at least twice before myself, once with each group. There we saw a few fish in the fish ladder, some displays about said ladder, and a few leaks in the visitor center’s structure (not something you want to see in a dam.)

Not far from the dam was the Bridge of the Gods; the actual bridge, not the natural phenomenon of the same name. The gift shop/restaurant had no postcards (which we were collecting along with memories and photos) and I saw no evidence of any deities on the bridge, but I do wonder: if they exist, why they would need a bridge?

Past another bridge, the Hood River Bridge (over the Columbia, in the city of Hood River, not over the actual Hood River, though we did cross an unnamed bridge over the Hood), we came to, at the time, the windiest part of the trip, the Rowena Loops. We stopped at the Rowena Overlook overlooking the aforementioned loops.

Back on the straight and narrow road, we discovered the Columbia Gorge discovery center. Inside of the center I saw an *actual* dire wolf, or at least the skeleton and description sign posted next to it.

We ended the first day of our trip in the city of The Dalles, which I realized must make for some awkward conversations and grammatical errors: “Where are you from?” “The Dalles.” “Which dalles? Where are the dalles you mean? There are lots of rivers with rapids. (Dalles is the plural form of the French word dalle, which usually translates to flagstone, but in traveler French (fur-trader French) means a rapids in a river.)” “No, the city of The Dalles.” “OK, where is The Dalles?”

In the morning (Sunday in case you’re lost) we left the city of The Dalles after seeing The Dalles Dam); more fish, less leaks, though we did see some authentic Native American (Chinook, perhaps?) fishing platforms, but they were not in use.

An unscheduled stop at Avery Overlook bought us some stunning views of the Columbia; the weather was cold but dry, and the valley was foggy in the higher reaches. It was here we saw our first barge.

The next stop was the Maryhill Museum, atop a bluff overlooking the Columbia. The Museum was originally built in 1914 as a four-level mansion for entrepreneur Samuel Hill, known for his love of roads and more notable projects like the Peace Arch (on the Washington-Canada border, which I visited in the past) and the Maryhill Stonehenge Memorial, which was our next stop. Outside the museum I played chicken with a single pretentious peacock, which ended in draw; suspected him of fowl play however (yet another terrible joke, I can’t help myself it seems).

Inside the museum we saw works from Auguste Rodin, the artist behind The Thinker statue, including small statuettes and drawings. There was also a collection of Native American artifacts, relics from Marie, Queen of Romania, who was a friend of Sam Hill (lucky Sam, to know a Queen), and my favorite, the chess set exhibit.

The chess exhibit featured chessmen and boards from the late 19th to early 20th centuries made of wood, bone, clay, glass, and precious metals. There were “standard” sets that look like what you find in the boards you can buy at a toy store and many sets depicting other figures, like Astrological symbols, Greco-Roman gods, animals, and even King Arthur. The smallest pieces were less than an inch high, where as the tallest were at least 8”. (As a side note, that night I played a few games of chess, as I was in the mood, against my mom’s computer on the easiest difficultly and found that I am apparently really bad at the game. I suppose I’ll stick to enjoying the craft and leave the playing to Kings.)

Three miles down the road from the museum, and yet still a part of it, was the Maryhill Stonehenge Replica. It was built in the center of the town of Maryhill, which burnt down sometime between its original dedication in 1918 and its completion and subsequent second dedication in 1929. It was built as a memorial for the soldiers that died in World War 1, more specifically the ones from Klickitat County.

It is a full scale, astronomically-aligned (the altar stone is aligned with the sunrise on the Summer Solstice), complete (as in how the ruins would look if not ruined) replica of the actual Stonehenge in England (north of Salisbury; not that I expect you to know where in England Salisbury is located [but I’m sure you’re looking it up right now], rather I just like the name, and the steak, which was named for an American Doctor, J.H. Salisbury [there, I saved you that at least]). Sam Hill was mistakenly informed (though I’m not sure how the theory was disproved) that Stonehenge was used for sacrifices, so he constructed the replica to represent how people were sacrificed to war. It is a very neat monument and worth the trip to see it.

The next dam, the John Day, had the gall to be closed to visitors, so we kept going to the McNary dam. This dam was smaller, more accessible (not just being open, it was easier to get to), and unmanned. We guided ourselves through the small visitor’s center to a deck overlooking the “fish separator,” a trough with increasingly smaller grate bars used to separate smaller fish from larger fish.

After that dam we crossed another bridge (I’m sure you’ve caught the trend of the trip: dams and bridges, if you didn’t), the Umatilla Bridge (which is actually a pair of bridges) in Umatilla County on the Columbia. We crossed the Columbia into Washington (on the plain bridge side) then turned around and crossed back (on the pretty, steel truss side), having no business in Washington.

In Pendleton, before turning in for the night, we went to dinner at a *very* fancy, and overly pricey, steakhouse. The steak was big and delicious, though bloodier than I like it (I’ve concluded that I don’t know how I like my steaks), and called the Rhinestone Cowboy, which was the deciding factor in me ordering it. It came with Parmesan potatoes au gratin, which were creamy and scrumptious. The décor of the steakhouse was Western-esque, complete with cowboy antiques like vests and saddles. I do, however, appreciate their real steak knives; heavy and large, unlike some so-called steak knives that I’ve seen that are probably just serrated butter knives. I slept well that night, with a full belly.

Monday morning, after “breakfast” (a Costco muffin), we went to tour the Pendleton Woolen Mill, which took about 10 minutes and wasn’t much of a tour. Apparently they send a lot of their work to Washougul, Washington and someplace in Nebraska. The looms were neat though; making Native American style blankets right before my eyes. The gift shop had a lot of nice shirts that were scarily priced ($100 and up) and blankets that were more than double that. I did walk out with a modestly priced wool blanket (less than half the cost of a shirt) and a plush black sheep; his name is Baa-Baa.

We stopped by the HQ for the Pendleton Underground Tours (which would tour underneath the city in the tunnels used for smuggling and trafficking as well as the town’s “historic” red-light district) but were denied the tour as they needed at least six people, and we were just two; perhaps another day.

After a proper breakfast (eggs, bacon, and a pancake) and a lengthy drive, we made it to Wallowa Lake. It was windy and cold and the lake was calm; we were the only ones there. We didn’t go in the water, but we enjoyed the scenery none-the-less.

After another long and especially windy (this was the windiest road of the trip, and possibly the windiest in the world) we arrived at the top of Hell’s Canyon. The sun was going down but the view was spectacular in spite of it. I enjoyed the view, but have to say I expected it to be more canyon-like, in the way the Grand Canyon is; however, it was grand.

In the town of Halfway (named because its Post Office was halfway between the towns Pine and Cornucopia, I am, apparently, an amateur historian) we had dinner at a tiny restaurant called Wild Bill’s where they could not serve water (or milkshakes, but I don’t know why) because their water plant had caught fire or burnt down (the server was vague) so the town was rationing water, but that did not affect me from eating my club sandwich and drinking my Coke. We drove the next hour to Baker City, where they had water, and spent the night.

At 10 a.m. we were on the road again, and by 11 we came to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, just outside of Baker City. Inside we saw many artifacts from the trail and learned about how harsh it was for the original “Trail Blazers,” though anyone who has been on the virtual trail could tell you indeed how harsh it was.

In the mid-afternoon we came to the first part of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, the Mascall Formation Overlook. There we were treated to a vast expanse of grassy hills and shades of brown that, in the sunlight, were very beautiful.

Almost immediately we arrived at the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center and were sent on a trip back in time to when giant beavers roamed the earth - scary indeed. There were no dinosaur fossils but it was chalk full of mammilla and plantae fossils, and even an unknown egg; I saw no chicken fossils, so the debate is settled for me. It was almost closing time, but we saw everything there was to see in the small center, but we picked all the bones there were (not literally, we weren’t allowed to touch them).

Another short drive brought us to The Painted Hills (another part of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument), but yet again, we arrived just as the sun was starting to set. The striations in the rock and soil were vibrant shades of red mixed with mellow shades of green and brown and were very impressive; I wish I could paint my hills like that.

We spent the night in Prinville after eating at another tiny diner that had a very tasty bacon cheeseburger.

On Wednesday we made good time to Warm Springs to visit their self-named Museum. We saw many more Native American artifacts and learned about their culture and the pale faces crushing impact on. Outside the museum there was a pond with tiny replicas of the Native fishing platforms; they were adorable!. I also learned a Sahaptin (Native American) word: ‘twanat’ which means ‘to follow.’ I suppose it’s really a verb, but I don’t know how to correctly conjugate it. I twanat, perhaps?

After the museum, we completed our trip by driving home, where, upon arrival, I took an immediate, long, and well deserved nap. Thus ends my Road trip to Eastern Oregon.