Road trip to Vale Oregon Sept 2017

     
      After leaving Burns we encounter a few passes with unusual names like Stinkingwater and Drinkingwater. There are a few long steep downgrades.

     On our way to Idaho we go through the town of Vale. We had read about the murals in town. Linda being a mural buff was excited. Well the excitement changes to outright joy as we enter the town. Pull over, pull over is all I hear in a excited loud voice. Even Hannah gets startled and starts looking around. Well no place right here, so we start circling the small town. Not once but three times. We did pull over for gas, and Linda jump's out. And off she goes on her quest. I park at the end of the gas station, and walk Hannah. Linda returns all smiles. She commands, that we have to go up a few streets and go down another. So we all get in the RV and follow her instructions. Seems she talked to someone who told her about a few others we missed. I spot a Less Schub tire store and check if they can check our tires. Yes, give then a few minutes. I guess I'm paranoid since the blow out. We will be getting on I 84, them I 80 for several hundred miles, so best to be safe. I do check them before we leave in the morning and with my heat gun whenever we stop especially along the interstate. In all there about 30 murals in this very small town. Many depicting The Oregon Trail. Very  neat, but some were beginning to show wearthering. We did miss about 12 pictures of murals. Not sure if we can come across them in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      BUT wait there is more. As we start out of town we both smell onions. And since I am not a fan of onions I pick up the smell instantly. The smell is getting stronger. Hannah starts smelling the vents, she even noticed the smell.

Then we begin  to see fields with what looks like onions all layed over like it is time to harvest.  Then we see the sign,

      Little did we  know that they grow 25% or over a Billion pounds of onions in the area consumed in the U.S.  You  know me know I am not looking for a roadside stand selling fresh onions.  A little research tells that here on the Oregon Idaho border is a very large onion producing area. Even though I don't like onions I would have liked to spend a day in this area. It is so much fum to find things like this on the back roads of America. Unfortunally we will be traveling 100's of miles along an interstate to get home to Florida and see what  damage we received from hurricane Irma .

Florance OR to Burns OR 2017

                            September 5th 2015

      Hi everyone, we have been home for about six weeks now and finally trying to get in the mood to start blogging again. We suffered very little hurricane damage to our home, but we lost our dock and our seawall suffered major damaged, and will have to be replaced. A costly expense the insurance doesn’t cover. I want to try and continue blogging about our trip out west as a diary for us and for future reference. I hope what I write will also help some of you with your travels. Linda did keep a journal which is a tremendous help. Now all I have to do is put it to type. There are a lot of details we are both trying to remember. We will start by telling of our 3,000 mile trip back to Florida. This is my second attempted to start blogging again. I feel it is something I must do to keep my mind active and to help remember the great trip we had even with some of the problems we encountered.

    Here we go. We were on the coast of Oregon in the city of Florence,  at a Thousand Trails RV Park when hurricane Irma hit the coast of Florida and passed through our home town of Cocoa leaving a path of devastation. After several phone calls to friends in our development we decided we better head home. Life is so different now that we are home owners then when we traveled full time for almost ten years.  At any rate we made the decision to head home to our adopted state of Florida.

     Many forest fires delayed our start back east. We didn’t want to make many detours with a lot of added mileage, so we just waited till we could go in the direction we planned. We did travel through some heavy smoke in Eugene and Sisters Oregon area. We passed some beautiful country we wanted to visit. Hopefully some day we may get back. There were many “fire camps” along the way up McKenzie Pass at 5325 feet high through the Cascades, which is open only in the summer. There were many lava flows in the area. There is world class fly fishing in several rivers   Smoke is heavy at times. We pass signs along the way telling the folks level one evacuation is in place, get ready to go. As we pass through the city of Sisters there is what looks of an old western town. Wish we could stop and visit. There is a RV park right in town. Then we pass through some more heavy smoke. We drive through the Oregon Badlands Wilderness.  We then continue along route 20 with not much but wilderness and few towns. A good two lane road. Our destination is Burns RV Park in Burns OR. Trip of 329 miles, much further then we like to travel in a day. Good thing we called we procured one of the last spaces where we could pull through and didn’t have to unhook. The park did fill up that night. We will do a review of this park in another post. Gas in the area was $3.09 a gallon.

 

In the city of Eugene

Through the McKenzie Pass and over the Cascades

Lava Flows

A huge load to bring over the Pass

More smoke approaching the city of Sisters

The cute city of Sisters, deserves a revisit

Top photo on right is an RV park in the town of Sisters, next a working ranch and finally a "full" service gas station. Remember them. Most attends in uniform.