Location: Emigrant Springs State Park, Oregon
We woke early this morning and checked out the Visitor Center at Three Island State Park. The diagonal trail that you see across the river behind Debi is the original Oregon Trail as it led down to the crossing point where the wagons and animals forded across the river. The museum was really well done, although I was intrigued by their push to put a very positive spin on reconciliation between Native Americans and European settlers. It pretty well whitewashed the fact that we walked the Indians on death marches and relegated them off to reservations with the most desolate land quality. Just sayin'.
In 1929, Laurie's journal recounts a very unpleasant, dusty drive from this point through desert country. She stated, "But we lived through it and arrived at Boise by 6:30 that night and went to the Municipal Tourist Park. A very nice place and the showers were keen."
We instead had an easy air-conditioned ride to Boise, where we investigated the state capitol building, since we had done the same in Wyoming and Utah. The building is very impressive, with its elegant marble interior.
Here's me checking out a gilded sculpture of George Washington (carved from Idaho wood) that's diplayed on the second floor.
Debi had read about Boise's Basque Community and Market which was an easy 3 block walk away. We hoofed it down there and found a sweet place that was serving Paella for lunch, which I ordered, and it was delicious.
Debi had several Tapas items, her favorite of which was the roll with oilve tapenade. We think Boise is a very cool city.
Laurie writes in her journal about a fairly unpleasant stay they had at a tourists camp in New Plymouth. She reports "it was full of people who were working in the fruit and had been there for a week or two."
We stopped at New Plymouth today and their welcome sign included the description of "World's Largest Horseshoe". After driving around for a bit, we found this mural, but were unable to see the big horseshoe.
Finally we decided they were talking about the layout of the town, which is in a horseshoe pattern. (Please see the accompanying Google Map screenshot.) Very clever.
The next stop for both the Russell family in 1929, and for us today, was the town of Weiser (pronounced "WEEZ-er"). When Nancy and I drove through there in June of 1999, we saw that the National Oldtime Fiddlers Contest had just been there. As luck would have it, 16 years later, the same contest was still happening today. We bought our tickets (a very reasonable $2.50 each!) and spent the next hour or so listening to competing fiddle players from California, Oregon, Ohio, etc. These men and women were GOOD! This is the National finals, so everyone of the competitors had already made first place in a regional final.
Here's a video we made of one of our favorite fiddlers from Bend, Oregon. (Some smartphones don't recognize flash, so you might have to see the video on a laptop or desktop).
After crossing the Snake River into Oregon (and picking up an hour!), our next stop was also where Laurie's crew had stopped, Fairwell Bend State Park. This is where the Oregon Trail pioneers had said goodbye to Snake River and headed toward the Columbia. Our outside thermometer at one point read 111 degrees, so we were happy to leave there and head for higher (and hopefully cooler) ground.
Before heading up into the Blue Mountains, though, we stopped at Hot Lake Spring, just as the Russell Clan had in 1929. Then it was a major 300 room Resort where people came from all over the world to soak in the sulphur hot springs to cure all sorts of ills, including syphilis. The hotel averaged 124 new guests daily and dining facilities for 1000.
When my sister Nancy and I made this trip in 1999, we felt fortunate to even find the place, but found it to be well secured behind a chain link fence, to keep vandals from further messing with the decaying, abandoned structure.
You can imagine my surprise today when we drove up and found it in operating "condition". In 2003 a couple bought it and started restoration of the badly damaged building. It's part a bronze foundry and part bed and breakfast. The artist is David Manuel. His work seems to feature realistic pioneer and wildlife sculptures. The painful part about walking around, is that even though they've gone to a huge expense to repair the infrastructure, it still falls way short of being fully restored. e.g. the floors are uneven, peeling paint, and it feels like a haunted house.
Laurie wrote "We stopped at the place where Warren G. Harding had dedicated the Old Oregon Trail and across the road from it stood the $30,000 log cabin." This is exactly where we are camped tonight, Emigrant Springs State Park. Here'a a pic of Debi at our campsite in an old growth forest. The temperature is currently at a much appreciated 70 degrees!
After inspecting the campground on our bikes we're unable to locate the log cabin that Laurie referred to, but we did find an old monument which was placed here around 1923, locating this spot as part of the "Old Oregon Trail 1843-57". I'm really glad we found it, because it's in a very obscure spot and I don't think many people get to see it.
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