Road Trip Part 13 (the final chapter): CROSSING THE DEADLY DESERT

When the state of Oregon is mentioned most people think of beaches on the Pacific, festivals of roses, snow capped mountains, mossy forests, and …

…rivers flowing into misty waterfalls.  And it’s true these are all part of the package.  The popular north-south route along the coast is a superb scenic highway, as is the east-west drive down the Columbia River Gorge.

But if you find yourself taking a detour to see Crater Lake in the central part of Oregon…and after you’ve taken a few pictures from the two or three accessible locations along the rim of the crater…

…and after you realize your photos will look just like every other tourist’s snapshots of Crater Lake unless you pose someone in front of the scenery which sort of defeats the purpose of landscape photography.   And then your next destination is the State of Idaho…

…you have to cross the Deadly Desert like we did.  

And since we didn’t have a hot air balloon or a flying sofa, 

we just had to drive and drive for hours.

Alkali Lake, worthless as drinking water and rimmed with —alkali.

It broke up the monotony of all that wilderness covered with brush and grass.

I missed getting a photo of a coyote that casually crossed in front of us not long after I took this picture because I was trying to explain to a guy who called my cell that we wouldn’t be able to help him with his problem because we were REALLY out of town.

This is bad country.  Even the image on the sign that means, 

“watch out for range cattle along the highway,” 

is represented by an ornery bull ready to punch out your headlights.

Idaho’s same kind of sign is a mellow cow just grazing by the side of the road.

On and on we went across the unending wasteland which is really just more of Nevada that Oregon took in out of pity.

We had big plans to find a nice place to stay in Boise, but we just ran out of day and endurance before we ran out of road.

So when we arrived at a little town called Vale we were thinking, “Any port in a storm.”  The only motel there looked okay so DH couldn’t understand why I was getting all PSYCHO...

…about the name, BATES MOTEL.  He still didn’t get it when he came back with a room key and I asked him if a skinny young guy was at the front desk.  “No, it was an OLD LADY.”  Even worse!

Our room was clean but small.  The television was on a low shelf and I STABBED my head on the corner of it when I stood up after opening my suitcase.  Not much BLOOD but I was still freaked out.  We were so tired we didn’t even bother to SHOWER before falling asleep.

After an uneventful night we drove on to Boise the next morning where we got breakfast.  The air was thick with smoke from wildfires.  We knew we were almost home.

Road Trip part 1-Smoke on the Water Fire in the Sky
Road Trip Part 2-Smelled the Mountain Air Man
Road Trip Part 3-On the Ship David B
Road Trip Part 4-Pods of Orcas
Road Trip Part 5-The Problem is All Inside Your Head
Road Trip Part 6-Looking Down On Fishermen
Road Trip Part 7-The Cure for Anything Is Water
Road Trip Part 8-Lighthouses
Road Trip Part 9-Slow Down and Read the Signs
Road Trip Part 10-Fresh Crabs
Road Trip Part 11-Food
Road Trip Part 12-Giants
Road Trip Part 13-Crossing the Deadly Desert