Going Underground in Pendelton

Location: Yakima Sportsman State Park, Washington

Our first stop today was in Pendelton, famous for the Woolen Mills. Turns out they don't give tours of the mill on Saturday, so we drove to the place where they give Underground Tours of Pendelton. Luck was with us, the tour was sold out, but two people had just cancelled. Our tour guide was named Chris, a former middle school English teacher, and she was a crack up. The tour was billed as 90 min. but it lasted 3 hours! Chris had a never ending supply of stories that kept us well entertained.

Our first destination once underground was an old bar where I sat in on a poker game with some of the regulars.

Debi got friendly with one of the cowboys.

But after he bought her a drink, things kinda went downhill from there.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, I tried to make the best of the situation by chating it up with another one of the oldtimers. (Hey Bud, do any of these guys remind you of your "friend" who used to stare at you at Charlie's?)

In another section of the Underground, the Pendelton Candy Works, I did an endorsement of a competitor's product.

Moving on, we visited the butcher shop, where meat was butchered and 100 pound blocks of ice were manufactured.

Here's our tour guide Chris, explaining about how soft the stuffed grizzly bear is. The entire town of Pendleton has blocks and blocks of tunnels underneath it and she took us through multiple sections of it.

One of the next stops was above ground at Madame Stella's bordello, which operated from 1928 to 1967, when Stella decided to finally retire. (Prostitution had been officially proclaimed illegal in Pendelton since 1953). In it's heyday, Pendelton had 14 houses of Ill repute. Here I am with Madame Stella in front of her "Cozy Rooms" which are up 32 steps through the doors behind us. Some customers referred to these as the Stairways to Heaven.

 

 

 

 

Here's Debi in front of one of the posters inside Madame Stella's.

Later I tried out the jail cell inside the Chinese section of the Underground. So sad.

Finally we finished the tour and had lunch at a local cafe. Delicious!

Soon we had driven into Washington and through Walla Walla, just as Lauie's crew had in 1929.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just as the Russell's had in 1929, we crossed the Columbia River over the bridge at Pasco, but it was no longer a toll bridge.

 

Before we got to our present campground in Yakima, we stopped to take a photo of the Teapot Dome Gas Station National Historic Site. (We thought this must be related to the Teapot Dome Scandal that we learned about in history class, but it turned out to just be a historic gas station that's shaped like a teapot.). We went for a bike ride when we got to the campground and it was 106 degrees! However, it's supposed to cool off to a chilly 77 degrees by sunrise tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Oregon Trail

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.

Fiddler Competition from Debi Russell on Vimeo.

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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Snaking our way thru Idaho

Location: Three Island State Park, ID

Continuing with the Russell 1929 Trek from Missouri to Washington today was mostly about following the Snake River in Idaho. We started out in Utah, near Bringham City where Laurie commented on the garden farms and fruit orchards. Glad to report that there were still plenty of fruit stands and orchards along the road. We opted for Rainer cherries.

 

 

The Russells in 1929 stopped at Pocatello, Idaho for people watching and a snack. Laurie reported that they ate "a lot of stuff like milk, rolls, bananas, potato chips and crackers." We also stopped there and ate cherries, jicama, blended mochas, celery with peanut butter for Ned and popcorn for Debi. We also decided to people watch by taking a bike ride thru old town. We saw a lot of old buildings from the 1929 and before time period.

 

This building was burned out, but it still had below the Baseball Cigar Store banner, the faded advertising on the brick wall that read "Sweets Salt Lake Chocolates are always appreciated."

 

This is the Carnegie Library that was built in 1907.

The 1929 Russells continued along the Oregon Trail stopping at historical spots and Laurie particularly noted Massacre Rock. We stopped there today read about the "massacre" which occurred in 1862 when 10 pioneers were killed by an Indian Raid. We were more impressed with the geology of the place. In this photo of me with the Snake River behind you can see the indentation in the bluff. This is where over 14,000 years ago water gushed over from the Bonneville Lake. It was the second largest flood in the history of the world! What finally evaporated off is now the Great Salt Lake.

We also went to the Visitor Center and Debi tried on some pioneer garb. Ain't she a cute prairie girl?

In Laurie's journal they stopped at a place called Yale, but it was only midday for us so we decided not to camp, but moved on. My dad, Ocrel (Oak), who was 11 at the time of the trek was told about lava from an ancient volcano and was very interested. On seeing another deposit he said excitedly, "Do you suppose that is some more saliva?"

In honor of my dad we got a picture of me in front of some basalt deposits.

Shoshone Falls, Idaho from Debi Russell on Vimeo.

The biggest surprise for us of the day was the Shoshone Falls. We had pretty low expections as we arrived at the falls, and we were amazed at the beauty of the place! In Laurie's journal, she reported that the flow over the falls was minimal due to dams on the Snake River. However, we found the flow was phenomenal. Here's a video we shot of the falls.

Here's a picture of Debi and me next to the falls. It was a really beautiful day there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our next stop was at the bridge across the Snake River in Twin Falls. In 1929 it was called the Jerome Bridge and at the time was the highest bridge in the world. It was completed in 1927. Here's a picture we found at the Visitor Center of the bridge with toll booth just after it was completed.

The current bridge which replaced the old bridge in 1976 is called the Perrine Bridge. It is now the 8th highest bridge in the U.S. This is the only place in the U.S. that allows base jumping any day of the year.

 

 

 

 

 

The view from the northern side of the bridge is a jaw dropper. If you look closely there is a golf course on both sides.

 

During the afternoon we saw the Thousand Springs gushing out from the hillsides along the Old Lincoln Highway.

 

 

 

 

 

In Laurie's journal she noted "a ford on the Snake River which had been used by emigrants we were glad for the bridge." This is our stopping point for the night. Today it's called Three Island State Park. The emigrants used two of the three islands to cross three channels in the river, but sometimes lost stock and wagons. We plan to cool off in the river tonight, hopefully we will have no losses to report.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This is the Place!

Location: Willard Bay State Park, Utah

We woke early this morning and our campsite was really beautiful as the sun first came over the mountain. We were about the same distance from Salt Lake City as the Russell Clan was on their trip, so we headed there first thing.

 

 

We drove the very winding route that the original Mormon pioneers had used to reach Salt Lake City in 1847. It turns out the poor Donner Party had been there a year earlier and spent 13 days cutting the trail through this area. That delay is what caused disaster for them when they got to the Sierras. The Mormon group made it through in only 6 days, thanks to the Donner Party's earlier work. The view from the pass above the valley was stunning this morning. An amazing number of bike riders were going both up and down this very steep road.

At the bottom of this long decent we stopped at the This Is The Place Heritage Park. This is the spot where Brigham Young is supposed to have recognized all the proper elements from his dream, so that he knew this was the place where Mormons should settle. Here I am proclaiming to Debi that This is the Place!

 

We walked around a bunch of the huge bronze statues in this place and through their gift shop. Let's just say that these guys take their historic bronze statues really seriously, perhaps a little too much so.

Our next stop was Temple Square, which Laurie wrote about at great length, but had only this to say about the "beehive house". "Brigham Young's beehive house was very odd." We toured this house, which was Brigham's first house and office from which he administered the Mormon Church. The beehive name comes from the beehive ornament which adorns the top of the building, which is symbolic of the industriousness which is so prized by the Mormon faith. Our tour guides were two young women, one of whom was probably one of the more socially awkward people you would ever want to meet. The house didn't seem that odd to us, but the hard sell of the Mormon faith was intense. One couple in our tour even bailed because they couldn't take the propoganda. Anyway, if any of you need a Family Proclamation Document, we would be glad to pass ours along.

We were really blown away with how truly imaculate everything was within the Temple Square. It had a strange feeling of being almost unreal, to the point where I actually felt several times like I was looking at a computer simulation rather than a real place. This is the Salt Lake Temple, with a gold angel at the very top.

The attention to the flower gardens within the Temple Square was actually unbelievable. At one point we passed a group of maybe ten young people giving some really intensive attention to one particular flower bed. One poor guy was even picking single blades of tiny weeds out of an almost perfect bed of mossy ground cover. All this attention really paid off, because the multitude of gorgeous flower beds was really jaw dropping.

We also attended a noon concert in the Tabernacle which featured their massive pipe organ. Featured in the concert were two famous pieces by Bach, a traditional Mormon hymn, which is played at every concert, and the Thunderer March by John Phillip Sousa, as the finale. My sisters, Nancy & Polly, will appreciate that I was unable to listen to a Souza march played on an organ without thinking of our father's enthusiastic attempts at playing "Under the Double Eagle" on our family Hammond organ (which never sounded the same after our family dog clawed at all the vacuum tubes in back while chasing a mouse).

Here Debi is attempting to become Brigham Young's second wife. You will notice that he appears to be unmoved by her advances, despite her very sincere gaze.

We wanted to see one landmark which Laurie described..."A block or two from the capitol is a great archway and on top is a wooden angel, goldplated however, which is supposed to have come from the entrance of Brigham Young's ranch." We saw this arch downtown, which features an eagle atop a beehive, and wondered, if this was the arch, when had the angel become an eagle. We actually questioned about seven different people about this, and were told that only the eagle had every appeared above the archway. We finally concluded that Laurie must have transposed the position of the eagle on top of the archway with the golden angel who is prominently displayed on top of the Mormon Temple.

We also toured the Capitol building, which Debi and I also thought was amazingly grand and impressive, certainly more than the State capitol building in Sacramento, and probably more so than the National capitol building in Washington D.C. The exterior was very impressive, but the scale and grandure of the interior with its amazing murals, really blew our minds, particularly when compared with the state capitol building in Cheyenne.

 

 

Here's one interior shot of which gives you some idea of the grandiose scale of this place. The natural light coming through the glass ceiling is really quite amazing.

One mystery item in the capitol building which we spent quite a while sluthing about was a piano which Laurie described in length. "A pioneer woman had brought it from Virginia...During an Indian uprising they fled with the piano to some other place in Utah and for some years lived in a two room cabin. She had five children who grew up sharing the crowded space, and when the roof leaked, they slept under the piano." Nobody in the capitol building knew anything about a piano, but they suggested we look in the Daughter of Pioneers Museum down the street.

At this other museum we saw the original eagle that had sat atop the arch way until a contractor had backed his truck into the archway and made it collapse. We also saw some of the covered wagons and stage coaches that had impressed the Russell Clan on their visit.

 

 

 

 

We even saw this very impressive restored horse-drawn fire engine from 1902. But the only piano that anyone wanted us to see was the one that had been wrapped in buffalo skins and buried for a year somewhere along the pioneer trail, only to have it be in perfect condition when it was unearthed again. We finally went back to the front desk and told our story again to two other volunteers. They said: "Oh, there are a couple of pianos on the second floor you should look at."

Sure enough, one of the pianos there had more of the less romantized story where because of a miscommunication the piano had been stored under a tent which leaked, and the family had sought shelter under the piano itself. Laurie claimed "the wood was still in good condition", while in fact water stains are clearly showing from the ordeal. But we had found the mystery piano! It turns out all of the items in this museum were originally diplayed in the capitol building while this building was being built. We felt triumphant in our search.

All of this museum viewing, and the stiffling 100 degree heat outside was enough for us, so we went in search of a campite. On the way we stopped for burgers and a chocolate malt at a local place that was started the same year Debi was born.

Soon we found a campsite and got ourselves over to cool off in the nearby lake. Here's me conquering a big water slide we found in the middle of the lake.

 

 

 

 

Here's Debi "catching air" as she arches off the bottom of the slide. It was a great way to end a summer day.

 

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