Fighting our way against the Head Winds!

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

We had 60 mph winds last evening, so the Rubbles had rubble in the yard that had to be cleaned up before we could leave this morning. And half of Oregon was plastered to our trucks and windshields, so called for a hose down. But around the planned departure time, we were ready to depart! So off we headed into whatever part of Oregon that wasn’t already with us, heading west on route 26 through Vale, OR.

Almost as soon as we got under way this morning we met head winds, and struggled against them all day. It does claim the mpg, but we had a good day anyway.

Our first destination was the small mining town of Sumpter, Oregon. It is a state heritage area, and I think the population is about 200. During the summer months you can take the self-guided tour of the five story Sumpter Dredge that is grounded where it stopped operating in 1954. The brochure says it is one of the nation’s oldest surviving gold-digging types of dredges, and that it was used to plow up most of what was once pasture and open meadow along the Powder River, leaving tailings that are now being reclaimed by wildlife and wetlands. There is also a six mile trip you can do on the narrow gauge railroad with a steam locomotive.

Well, as usual, our plans didn’t pan out! It was quite cool and windy, with some rain showers thrown in, and as we got up to the 5,000 ft elevation, we hit snow flurries. Enough weather that we decided it wasn’t a good day to be traipsing around the Sumpter area, so we skipped it and continued on to John Day. It was lunch time and we were on the lookout for a fast food place. Not seeing one, we opted for a city park and pulled in to fix our soup and sandwich lunch. It “just happened” to be at the Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site where there is a restored building that contains a representation of the contents from the general store, pharmacy, doctor’s office, community center, and home of “Doc” Hay and Lung On who operated the site during the gold rush in eastern Oregon. John Day had the third largest population of Chinese workers in the U.S.during that time. We couldn’t take the guided tour of the building because another group was coming in, but did go across the street to an interpretive center and enjoyed the small museum area there, watched a short film, and chatted with the very helpful and talkative ladies on duty. Although they did not have a passport stamp, they did stamp our books with their address stamp.

Back to fighting the headwinds, we chugged on down the road to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, stopping first at an overlook where we didn’t know what we were seeing, but about got blown away, and then we continued on to the Visitor Center at the Sheep Rock unit. Of course the first thing on the agenda was stamps for our books, then the movie and a look around the fossil exhibits. There are lots of examples of leaf and other things embedded in rock, but also a lot of animal remains found in a widespread area of eastern Oregon. There are lots of jawbones and some of them were impressive size.

Supposedly some from animals no longer known to us.    We talked to the ranger on duty, and he was very informative. He encouraged us to stop at the Painted Hills unit of the Monument, but said it was iffy whether we would find the ranger there to get our stamp. He said that unit was off the highway about six miles down a dirt road. As we drove in we had to wonder if he had ever been there. The six miles was paved, and only turned to dirt as you entered the park. Although it was as he said about the ranger, and we didn’t find him or get our stamp there. The painted hills were very pretty, and on the six mile drive back out to the highway, we had a tail wind! Lot of good six miles will do for our mpg.

About 15 more miles down the road we stopped at a National Forest Service campground, Ochoco Divide, and are spending the night here.

 

 

We’ve had a very enjoyable first day back on the road.