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| Site #1 at Bear Wallow campground |
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| This is actually what the sign in the park looked like. |
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| city park in Heppner, Oregon |
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| On the Blue Mountain scenic byway |
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| large dam in Heppner, Oregon |
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| The school building in the park |
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| Other interest in Heppner |
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| End of out back roads, getting on I84 |
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| Mt Hood was out in all its glory |
Our plans for this trip look like we will pretty much circle the state of Oregon. Stay tuned to see when our plans will change - you know they will, or at least our history says they will.
Our first stop of the day was lunch at Taco Bell in La Grande. We also made a quick stop at Grocery Outlet just across the lot, and left the Flintstone mobile there for a quick trip up to Wallowa. The Rubbles wanted to get a couple of pictures of Dick's headstone. It was a pretty drive in through the hills and along the Grande Ronde river.
Then, to see some of Oregon we hadn't seen before and to get off the interstate, we went up a couple of exits and turned south on 244 that continued along the Grande Ronde river. It was more of a river on the Wallowa side, but still pretty. It looked like you could pretty much wade across most of it through this section. We checked out several campsites along the way and finally stopped maybe 10 miles out of Ukiah at a little campground called Bear Wallow. We took site #1 that was large enough and level enough for both us and paid a whopping $4. We really do spend big!
We got a good night's sleep, and awoke to a chilling 37 degrees. We had sure pulled up all the blankets during the night, and had to break out the sweatshirts when we got up!
We decided to head on the the road and get breakfast. Like I said, it was only about 10 miles to Ukiah, but it is barely a blink of a berg, so we went on. Instead of going up 395 we went across the road and took the Blue Mountain Scenic Byway on over to Heppner. It was a scenic drive, but mostly just up in the hills with a lot of elk hunters. There were pickups parked anywhere they could get off the road, and anyone you passed on the road was decked out in cammo.
Heppner was a bigger town than we expected but we didn't see anywhere to eat. We stopped at a little city park where this sign was in front of a tree in the middle of the park road. Guess it must be a city joke why it is upside down. A lady there in the park said there was a cafe in the next town, Ione, so we went on. We did pass one place that didn't look like much, so continued on, eventually joining I84 again just east of Arlington. We finally stopped at Cousins in The Dalles at noon our time. Betty and Fred ordered lunch while Wilma and Barney had omelets and a huge biscuit. We decided it was a decent place to eat. Could have just been that we were hungry by then!
The rest of the day was just freeway driving to Longview, Washington, then across the bridge to 30 on the Oregon side, on into Astoria and out to Hammond and Fort Stevens. We got camping spots through Thursday, and so far there are no spots open for the weekend, we don't know what will happen then.
Drove back into town to get fishing licenses, then settled in for the night.
I'll keep catching up to date, so check back.
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