In the sleepy Blue mountains

Labor Day weekend we went up to Baker City--eastern Oregon, right in the middle of the Blue mountains--to visit Rustin and Suzi. We started out much too late on Friday, due to working too long and a car that couldn't even limp itself home, and ended up getting to Boise at 2 am. We slept there at a Marriott we'd reserved. The next day we got into Baker City around 11 am, their time.

The town is great. It's got a historic downtown with big brick buildings, many of which are in disrepair. The Blue mountains rise up to the west, and the Wallowas to the east, and there's this sleepy little town in the valley. That's the best word I came up with to describe the town--sleepy. It's quiet and quaint, everyone knows each other (like the farmers' market at the big park by the library, where everyone greeted each other and basically bartered produce). The people are friendly, the streets just barely busy. There are a few little markets and boutiques lining the street, and everything shuts down by 9. Last call at the brewpub is 10:20; they close at 11.


Bella controlling the merry-go-round at Geiser-Pollman Park

Jenny and Dana also came out from Bend so we could all hang out. Saturday we all went to Rustin and Suzi's 175-acre property right next to the old Oregon Trail. There's an old 1800s farmhouse on the property that Rustin is restoring/modifying rather elaborately (he just lifted it and added a foundation). There are old names scrawled on the wooden walls behind where the cheesecloth wallpaper used to hang--Florabelle was one of the names. Rustin showed me his collection of old bottles that he found while digging around--they're amazing: Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, Dr. Sanford's Liver Invigorator, California Fig Syrup and so on. They've got two cats and 24 chickens than run around under these huge ancient-looking gray poplars with a ropeswing. I tried feeding Rocky the rooster, and he attacked me; I had scabbed clawmark on my arm to prove it. Jarom rode a little electric kid-sized ATV around over and over again; he kept going up this little hill and getting stuck. I also drove Rustin's adult-sized ATV a little bit with the kids, down a marshy cow trail under the warm afternoon sun.


Poplar ropeswing--notice the massive limb


Jarom on his ATV, the ranch house in the background


Big ATV ride

Saturday night was girls' night out, leaving us men with a lot of music to swap and six children running about (nevermind how Suzi backed into our Jeep because I parked it halfway behind them.) The girls ate at the Prospector, a little restaurant run by a husband-and-wife team who cooks everything in the morning and refrigerates it, ready to serve later. When the food runs out, they close for the day, so the menu is always rotating, always changing. (For our dinner, us boys ordered thin-crust Domino's pizza and an Oreo cookie dessert pizza.) The girls then watched Stardust and came home to relieve us.

Rustin and Dana and I went back to the ranch to lock up the chicken coop. Afterwards we went down to Barley's Brewpub, owned by one of Rustin's friends. Those guys got some cool-sounding microbrews--this guy got a Diet Coke. Rustin ordered a coyote wheat ale and espresso stout. Dana got an IPA and a hot blonde (jalapeño). Like I said before, last call was 10:20, but we didn't leave the place till midnight. Rustin knows the owner, remember. And they were able to talk about hops and harvest and storage for a good hour and a half. When we got back everyone was sleeping. We went straightaway to bed.

The next day Rustin and Dana and I drove up this crazy forest road into the Elkhorn Range. It was some real fourwheeling. At about 7500 feet we got out to hike along the trail. It wound around the mountains, giving us a beautiful view of the Powder River, Phillips Lake and an old lime mine. All along the way we were surrounded by lodgepole pine and tamarack. The trail was dusty but fairly straight; it dry and hot out but our way wasn't too steep. After 2.5 miles or so, we rounded a rubbly corner piled high with scree and there was beautiful Twin Lakes right before us, below huge Rock Creek Butte (the highest peak in the Blue Mountains). The wind rippled white across the surface of the bigger lake. (There seems to be a Twin Lakes just about everywhere in the US.) We went a little further to where the trail forked, heading down to the lake. Mountains goats were feeding in the yellowy meadows below. But high above us to the south was a craggy slope that led up to Elkhorn Peak, the second highest point in the Blue Mountains. (There's a cool local legend, attributed to Indians, about the face on Elkhorn Peak.) I decided to try and quickly head up it, and Rustin came with me; Dana stayed behind to wait for us. It turned to be harder and further than we thought. There was no set trail, just scree and rocks and trees. Half a mile and a steep 45 minutes later, we came out on top. It's such a feeling, when you get out high on top of a mountain or summit and the cold wind comes whipping you in the face and eyes, drying your mouth and blinding you. Somehow it makes you feel powerful. We stood in awe for a few minutes, looking around--right below us was Goodrich reservoir, further down was the Baker valley, the tiny agricultural communities and the old Oregon Trail beyond. Far west stood the Cascades. Just think of how this looked to the first people who stood here . . . Anyway, we hurried down to Dana, and since we'd left him an hour and fifteen minutes earlier, he was gone. We rushed back across the three-mile trail, even running for almost ten minutes, till we found a signal he left us: a food wrapper in the middle of the trail with a rock anchoring it. When we got back to the car he was there waiting for us.


Our trail, forest road NF-030


Wind over one of the twins


Baker valley from the top of Elkhorn Peak

After our hike, we went back to their house for a really nice dinner Suzi had made. We hung around for the rest of the day, had a little Borat viewing session before we all went to bed. Bright and early the next morning--5 am Oregon time--our little family got up and left Baker City to return to a different mountain town.


In memory of the American cowboy