Traveling: Lewiston, ID to John Day, OR

June 8, 2013

The sun was shining strongly in a blue blue sky when I left Lewiston as it does in the western high desert country. Even though the temperatures were already climbing, the low humidity kept things comfortable. I love early mornings like this....and the evenings.

I found a Starbucks and got caught up writing this blog while eavesdropping on a conversation next to me. A young couple was meeting with their wedding photographer, a young woman of significant girth and colorful attire.

When I left mid morning and climbed out of the Clearwater and Snake river valleys for several miles, up and up and up an easy grade, I THOUGHT this would be my day: travelling through the high desert ranches and ranges through relatively open land which didn't exactly happen. I was headed directly south to Enterprise, Oregon, and went in and out of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest for hours. At one point, the road descended to a river valley before going up again. I was not expecting this precipitous road, and felt it rivaled the Going-to-the-Sun road at times. I pretty much got used to western mountain roads, but this one surprised me and I just wanted it to end. Like significant drop-offs on my side of the road and the feeling that the sky was nearly in my car.

At one point, I pulled off and watched a pair of Western tanagers moving through the pines. These are beautifully colorful birds with reddish heads and yellow bodies. The combination of sun, trees, sky and mountains on a clear summer day is as good as it gets. There were many motorcyclists out and about also. After that initial white-knuckle driving, the rest of the day was fine.

Enterprise is a small town with an exquisite and dramatic back-drop of snow-covered moutains, but it is not touristy as similarly situated towns are: Whitefish, Montana for example, or Riggins, Idaho, or Salida, Colorado. This was just another small western town, a center for the local ranchers. I stopped at a Subway and got a sandwich with avocado and cheeses and greens and olives, etc. Later on the trip, I also tried a Subway and got a "chopped salad," choosing the ingredients I wanted, The young kid behind the counter seriously put them in a bowl and chopped it all up into bite-sized pieces. It was surprisingly tasty.

The rest of the afternoon, I drove west, arriving at John Day late afternoon where I stayed for the night. I worked next to an open window. Several of the motorcyclists had also stopped here and were hanging out on their balconies, talking and laughing but not obtrusive.

From Wikipedia:

"John Day was born in Culpeper County, Virginia and came west through Kentucky and to Spanish Upper Louisiana (now Missouri) by 1797. In late 1810, he was engaged as a hunter for the Pacific Fur Company's Overland Expedition (sometimes called the Hunt Party or Astor Expedition), traveling west from Missouri to Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1811-1812. He is best known, along with Ramsay Crooks, for being robbed and stripped naked by Indians on the Columbia River near the mouth of the river that now bears his name in Western Oregon. After finally making their way to Fort Astoria in April, Day was assigned to accompany Robert Stuart back east to St. Louis in June 1812, but was left on the Lower Columbia River where he is said to have gone mad. He returned to Fort Astoria and spent the next eight years hunting and trapping mainly in the Willamette Valley and what is now southern Idaho. John Day died February 16, 1820 at the winter camp of Donald MacKenzie's Snake Country Expedition in what is now the Little Lost River valley in Butte County, Idaho.

His name is well-remembered, being attached to the John Day River and its four branches in eastern Oregon, as well as the cities of John Day and Dayville in Grant County, Oregon, and a smaller river and unincorporated community in Clatsop County, Oregon, the John Day Dam on the Columbia River, and the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. The Little Lost River, Idaho, was previously known as "Day's River" and the valley was called "Day's Defile" during the fur trade era."

I read somewhere that John Day (the man) never was in this area which was eventually named after him. Interesting how things happen.