Day One
We spent the day traveling from Provo to Oregon. After leaving the beautiful valleys of Utah with the taste of the first winter storm on the wind we followed Interstate 84 into Idaho following the path of the massive flood waters that poured from Lake Bonneville into the sea down the Snake River. The Snake River is huge. Looking at the dust clouds created by the wind in this flood plain it’s easy to conclude that the only reason all these farms are here is because of the soils and water granted by the river. This is a dry place where tumble weed suddenly seems a very stable strategy. Watching the dust blow across the landscape I wonder if it all collects at the end of the valley, far to the east where the Tetons mark a sudden end. Dr Rader informs me that there are indeed sand dunes out there, built where the wind finally loses its muster.
We crossed the Snake one last time to get into Oregon. Here the plains are bumpier, forming true mountains now and then as we follow the path of the Oregon Trail through the Blue Mountains. It’s still dry and mostly fields of golden grass. The rain is pretty intense through here as we pass Baker, Le Grande, and Pendleton. At last we leave the rolling quasi mountains and with it the dense cloud cover that has drenched us in rain all these miles. The sun is setting ahead of us as we drive to the west, the beams of light highlighting the grasslands and the cloud shrouded mountains behind us. As the long golden sunset continues we drop into the basin of the mighty Columbia, which somewhere off our map has swallowed the Snake River into its massive depths. At the tops of the passes our car reported the temperature at a balmy 37 F. It bit into us and made us reconsider our camping plans. Now we have dropped into the upper gorge and the car reports a pleasant 54 F, even hours past sunset. We decide the skip the camping part and press on towards the coast. It will mean another 5 hours of driving and we shan’t arrive until well beyond midnight. But it means we will soon be at the sea, and the mystical wonders of briny air will pervade every sense until it becomes so ubiquitous so as to be undetectable.
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