Leaving Montpelier, Idaho, I saw an old wagon—or a replica of a wagon—on the roof of a building, with bears attending it. There were carved bears everywhere in Montpelier, but we did not see any live bears. A couple of pronghorn antelopes in Wyoming, and those cute prairie dogs, are really the only wildlife we’ve seen so far.
A wagon with bears, perched on a roof in
Montpelier, Idaho, near where we ate breakfast
A stop at Soda Springs, Idaho, where the water allegedly tasted like beer according to Oregon Trail pioneers, led us to the Soda Springs geyser, supposedly the world’s only manmade geyser. The city was trying to find a hot springs to feed a town swimming pool when the workers hit the geyser, and it was capped in such a way that they could set the spray off every hour on the hour. Imagine our dismay when we found out the geyser was out of order. That’s what you get with manmade natural wonders, I guess.
Soda Springs Geyser: Out of Order
We traveled mostly along the interstate in southern Idaho, skirting the Snake River Valley on I-84, and it wasn’t too exciting. We’ve seen Shoshone Falls and the place where Evel Knevel tried to jump the Snake River Canyon before, so we just drove on to a major historical spot on the Oregon Trail, Glenns Ferry, a little more than halfway across the bottom of the state.
Glenn’s Ferry/Three Island Crossing was a fairly easy place for wagons to get across the Snake River, which is shallow but wide, and for a lot of its winding ways, it has very steep banks; in some places it is essentially a canyon. But friendly Indians showed the first wagon trains how to cross between islands in the river at Glenn’s Ferry, and as the name suggests, eventually there was also a ferry there. Not exactly the Anderson Ferry, but it got one wagon at a time across the river.
There was a nice state park in Glenns Ferry, so we got a campsite for the night, and the next morning we went down to see the Three Islands Ferry crossing and went to the park’s interpretive center. Crossing the Snake River was a major hurdle but there was a way to safely use two of the three islands in the river to get a cross—usually. We saw a reenactment on a film at the interpretive center, and even the reenactors lost a wagon going across, so it wasn’t easy. Hence the ferry, run by a man named Glenn, which was just a small flat platform that was pulled back and forth across the river with ropes and a winch.
A reproduction of the ferry that took wagons
across the Snake River in central Idaho
The ferry sits in a field now, but you can just see where
the winch was on the opposite side of the river. After we investigated the
crossing, we headed out on state roads through the Snake River Birds of Prey
sanctuary, south of the interstate. It was a nice drive along the Snake, though
I only saw one hawk. But near the town of Murphy, Idaho, we did see the site of
the aptly named Utter Disaster. A group of emigrants and wagons led by Elijah
J. Utter were set upon by Indians and 12 emigrants were killed; the ones that
escaped made their way to the Oywhee River, but without supplies more died
before they were rescued by an Army contingent. It was the largest loss of life
of any wagon train along the Oregon Trail—literally an utter disaster.
The historic marker for the Utter Disaster
Not too far past Murphy, we came to the Oregon border and
stopped for a sandwich for lunch before driving on to Ontario, Oregon, where we
stayed at a motel for the night and did some laundry while we were there.
Ontario is a fairly busy little border town, but when you head out across
eastern Oregon, it’s one of the most desolate—though beautiful—drives in the
country. We took the northern route, on U.S. 26, stopping just past Unity at a
U.S. Forest Service campground where we’ve stayed in the past, near Unity,
Oregon. We also stopped at a state park at Unity Lake, but we decided we liked
the campground we knew at Yellow Pine better, so we set up camp and had a nice
fire, taking advantage of a fairly damp spring that meant there were no fire
bans yet.
A nice campfire at Yellow Pine campground
In the morning, we headed west, and the Wallowa Mountains
came into view, still snowcapped at the end of June. We stopped for gas and
coffee in Prairie City but we bypassed the John Day Fossil Beds site this trip,
since we’d been there in the past and now we were wanting to get to Redmond to
stay with our friends, Amanda’s parents, Paul and Crystal. We also did not exactly follow the end of the Oregon Trail, which goes up through the Columbia River valley to Oregon City. But we had been that way before also, so we just took the direct route to the eastern slopes of the Cascades and arrived in
Redmond in the afternoon.
The Wallowa Mountains in eastern Oregon
We set up our camper under their carport for some shade because Redmond is in the desert and it's hot there in the summer. We had a delightful visit just hanging out and puttering around their yard, which is the only backyard I have ever been in that has its own lava flow.
That big lump of rock is a very old lava flow
in Paul and Crystal’s backyard, right off the deck.
Although I didn’t take any photos of people, I did take a few photos of the pretty place just above the Deschutes River where Crystal and Paul live, and we walked down to the river where there is a wonderful view of the Cascade Mountains, in particular the Three Sisters.
Two of the Sisters, from Redmond, Oregon
The night before we left Redmond, we all went to Smith Rock
where we had a picnic dinner of fried chicken and potato salad while enjoying
the view, which is something straight out of Middle Earth, as the Crooked River
winds around the base of Smith Rock. It was a beautiful evening and we had a
nice visit before heading out on the last lap of our journey to Depoe Bay.
Smith Rock, the part of Oregon
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