There and Back Again

Last Saturday, The Texan and I left Portland in a record-breaking downpour and drove out to the new digs in Idaho. We were transporting to The Family a second car -- their 22-year-old white Toyota Corolla. The Corolla's air conditioning doesn't work any more, nor the radio; the engine runs well, but we were not convinced it would be able to make the 400+ mile summer trip to Boise. So we drove two cars, trading off periodically to relieve boredom. When we stopped in The Dalles for lunch, I reported that "now playing in the Blue Mini" was a CD of the original Broadway cast production of Brigadoon. The Texan replied that the entertainment in the white car was watching the arrow on the fuel gauge swing up and down. The fuel gauge doesn't work, either. (To save you any agonizing suspense, Reader, the Toyota purred without a hiccough the whole way there, using significantly less gas than the Mini Cooper along the way.)

I have been trying to figure out why I wanted to call this entry There and Back Again, the subtitle of The Hobbit. I must be free associating that the road goes ever on. And on. That is one long, long, drive. Seven hours with no stops (but further than one tank of gas, so stops are required), and when you go east, you also lose an hour. Boise is just close enough to attempt in one day, but far enough away to discourage stopping for hikes.

And, particularly on the drive east, what is there to look forward to? We left Portland in a rainstorm (not so good) but at least everything was damp and green. You drive through the Columbia River Gorge, with its magnificent waterfalls, the broad blue river and hillsides thick with conifers.

Image from Flickr.com

Slowly the freeway rises up to an open plateau, the river far below and the trees far behind. This, even, is not unbeautiful (although the view from the freeway isn't the best) -- but at least everything is golden, and gently rolling. And the windmills! The amazing windmills that poke up from every crest like the snout of a dog who has been messing with porcupines.

(I could go on at length about the beauty of manmade sophistication highlighting the elegance of the austere landscape -- I had over six hours to contemplate it -- but I'll save it. Or is it that I'll save you?)

The river and the freeway part ways. You spend over an hour traversing a section a disgruntled friend once called "80 miles of Nevada", high desert plateau, before you enter the Blue Mountains. Dry, also, but genuine mountains of blue spruce, bluer skies, steep cliffs, and snow-fed rivers.

(Taken from the drivers seat of the white car, you can see both the extensive crack in the windshield,

at extreme bottom of the photo, and the Mini out in front, just passing a signpost for La Grande and

places east. Click on any of the photos if you want to see them, larger.)

You turn south, paralleling the Snake River (although that is out of sight many miles away at the bottom of a distant, inhospitable canyon). The landscape is dotted with old memories of gold rush dredgings, defunct mines. The foothills are brown, but with the sun so low behind you, the sky is piercing azure, and you can still make out some of the ruts left from the Oregon Trail, which petered out 130 years ago.

(Well, no ruts in this photo. None of those turned out.)

And then the land just gets browner, and more withered, the hills sucked dry and showing bones like the fingers on a woman who spent too many hours tanning in her youth. Colors are limited to pale blue and pale tan. Texture is scrub. Signs point out "buttes" and "gulches".

(Taken somewhere east of Ontario, west of Caldwell, Idaho.

I was traveling west, home actually, when I took this photo,

so this is what you leave when you drive east. It does not get better for many, many miles.)

The freeway careens down to the bottom of a ravine, meeting up with the Snake River in the heart of the truly ugly industrial town of Ontario, Oregon (of Ore-Ida Tater Tot fame -- get it? Oregon-Idaho Potatoes). You cross over into Idaho. Within a few miles, the concrete, homogenous, unending waves of defunct shopping mall begins, due to uncontrolled sub-urban sprawl (and a ruthless economy), about 25 miles west of Boise.

But at least, now, for us, Boise offers a tidy, loving home to visit. It's not the Shire, there are no round doors -- but residents are friendly, and there are sure to be some excellent second breakfasts available if you visit, too.