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.
and, since I’ve been reading up on Van Gogh lately, I modified the colors to more yellows, golds and blues.
