Tag Archives: road trip

Mt. St. Helens

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May 18, 1980. I don’t remember the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on that actual day, but I do remember hearing about the volcano as a small child. (Side note: I do have a very distinct memory of January 1, 1980 and being super excited that a new decade was starting — weird thought for a four-year-old.) When my parents came to visit me in Washington a couple of weeks ago, we made a two-day trip to the Cascades and spent most of the second day driving and exploring in the area around Mt. St. Helens.

We approached the mountain from the west and got amazing views of the crater, which is not just a hole in the top of the mountain, but a hole plus half the side of the peak missing. It’s incredibly difficult to wrap my mind around 1,300 feet of a mountain top just exploding, but when you watch the video at the visitor center at the Johnston Ridge Observatory, you see that’s just what happened. Earthquake, massive eruption and landslide, blast of steam, tons of ash, mudslide. Catastrophic.

driving towards Mt St Helens on Hwy 504, view of volcanic sediment along the Toutle River

 

view of Mt St Helens from the blast zone

 

another view from the blast zone

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Painted Hills, Oregon

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Call this a prequel. On my way to Bend, Oregon, last week, I added an hour to my drive in order to see the Painted Hills Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument outside Mitchell, Oregon. Well worth the extra hour on the road, I might add.

view of the Painted Hills from Overlook Trail

I’ll spare you all the geological details, but suffice it to say that something to do with lava and ash from the Cascades mixed with clay turned out to be these strange and subtly beautiful hills in Central Oregon. I say subtly beautiful, in contrast with the majesty of the snow-covered peaks of the Cascades, but both are beautiful in their own right.

along the Painted Cove Trail

There isn’t a visitor center at this unit of the national monument, but there are restrooms and picnic tables on a side road near the entrance. If you happen to miss those restrooms, never fear — you won’t see another soul for most of the rest of your solitary tour of the Painted Hills, and you can find a nice tall-ish sage bush to serve you just fine near the Painted Cove trailhead. Not that I know from experience. Except I do.

close-up of bentonite clay on the side of a painted hill

It’s a free park, people. Go to Central Oregon!

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Lava Butte

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After I checked out of my yurt at Tumalo, I headed south again to the Lava Lands Visitor Center in the Deschutes National Forest to see the lava fields up close and to go up to the fire lookout station on Lava Butte. The ranger at the entrance booth gave me a 30 minute pass to drive up the road to the parking lot on top of Lava Butte — there are only 10 parking spots at the top, so they limit your time to give everyone a chance to drive up. But I opted to park at the bottom and walk up the 1 3/4 mile road instead. How did I know I only wanted to spend 30 minutes up there? And why drive when you can walk? I was feeling a bit Edward Abbey-ish at this point. Get out of your car and walk for a change, people.

fire lookout station in the Deschutes National Forest,
Lava Butte

I talked to some ladies in the parking lot who assured me it would only take 35 or 40 minutes to walk up to the top, so I rearranged some stuff in my car, filled up my water bottle, and set off. As I was leaving the parking lot to get onto the road up the hill, a guy in a beat up hatchback came down the hill and swung into the parking lot past me.

“You’ve got water and a good pair of shoes, what more do you need on a day like today?” he called to me out his open car window.

“True. It’s a good day for a walk.”

He drove slowly past me, blond hair and sunglasses. I kept walking, thinking he had just called out as a greeting. But he continued talking to me through the window. “Your shoes are better than mine — you wanna see my shoes?”

Is this guy for real?

Yes. Yes, he was for real. He stopped the car and contorted to stick his right foot out the driver’s side window to show me a flapping sole.

“You may be about ready for a new pair of shoes,” I said.

“Well, Johnny Cash says to walk hard.”

Actually, Johnny Cash walked the line, but who am I to point that out?

“You wanna see my tattoos?” He held out his wrists. “This one says ‘patience,’ but you have to come read the other one.” He held out his left wrist for me to read. This is the point, I was thinking, where he’s either going to pull a knife on me or his other wrist is going to say “faith” and he’s going to witness to me. I wasn’t getting a knife-pulling vibe at all (and I’m usually pretty paranoid about strangers), so I walked back over to the car to read his wrist. “Serendipity.”

“It’s why I stopped to talk to you,” he said and looked at me sincerely.

I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help myself. Nice line, friend. The fact that you have the word written permanently on your skin leads me to believe I’m not the first girl you’ve used that line on. Probably not the first today even.

“You wanna go walk on those trails with me?” He indicated the trails through the lava fields by the visitor center on the other side of the parking lot.

“Nah, I haven’t been up here yet.” I pointed to the butte. “I wanna go there first.” Please, please, don’t want to go back up the hill, Mr. Serendipity.

“I’ve already been there, so I’m gonna go this way. But you’re gonna love it.” Pause. “Man, I haven’t had a smoke in five hours.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, waved over my shoulder, and walked on. I looked back once to make sure he wasn’t following me, and he gave me the peace sign as he drove towards the visitor center. Peace, bro.

Back to Lava Butte…

Walking instead of driving was the right choice. The whole way up the hill you have the chance to savor the view, winding around the cinder cone that once “exuded lava” (so much less violent than erupting, so mellow, so Oregon) through the surrounding countryside. You alternate between views of the lava field, forest, and the Blue Mountains to the east, and amazing views of the Cascades to the west: Broken Top, the Three Sisters, Mt Washington, Mt Jefferson, Mt Hood, and Mt Adams across in Washington. Be sure to go on a clear day, without a cloud in the sky, only the contrails of jets going from Seattle to Los Angeles.

view of the Cascades from the road up Lava Butte

At the top of the butte is a fire lookout station, one of several active stations monitoring the Deschutes National Forest. You can also walk a 3/4 mile trail around the rim of the butte and peer into the center of the cinder cone. I took my time wandering around, admiring the mountain vista one last time on my Central Oregon trip, rejoicing that I’d had the opportunity to be here this week, reflecting on the Majestic Creator who displays His majesty through snow-covered peaks. For reasons I don’t understand, He is good to me.

outside the Lava Lands Visitor Center

I headed back down the butte to check out the visitor center and lava field trails before making my way back to Washington. The sun was high overhead and the temperature near 80, warm enough to make me wish for a moment that I could hitch a ride back down the hill with Patience-and-Serendipity. (I’m just kidding, everyone — I promise I never, ever hitchhike. Not in America, at least.)

Goodbye, Central Oregon. It’s been real.

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North of Bend

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On the third evening of my stay at the yurt in Tumalo State Park, I was joined by a dear friend from the Tri-Cities, Marilyn. It turned out that she needed to pick up her grandson in Central Oregon the same week that I would be there camping, so she called and asked if she could come see me there and check out the yurt. Of course I welcomed the company and told her to bring a sleeping bag along and stay the night — the yurt sleeps five, so there was plenty of room.

Marilyn is originally from Portland but knows all of Oregon very well, and since the day I arrived in the Northwest, she has been my travel consultant — but this was the first chance we had to actually do some touring together. I was more than happy to let her take the driver’s seat and show me around. It’s easier to crane your neck and look at all the glory of Creation surrounding you if you don’t have to worry that you might run your car off the road over a cliff.

Our first stop was the Lava Lands Visitor Center in the Deschutes National Forest 15 miles south of Bend, but we learned upon arrival that they were closed until the next day. After my drive on the Cascade Lakes Byway the day before, I really wanted to stop and see a lava field up close, so I decided it would be worth it to drive out of my way to come back to Lava Lands when they opened again (look for that blog post tomorrow) — how on earth could I drive all the way back to Washington without seeing the lava fields and the fire lookout tower on Lava Butte up close and personal?

From there, Marilyn drove us back north of Bend to the Crooked River Gorge, 9 miles north of Redmond, not far from Smith Rock State Park outside Terrebonne. I happened to be looking down at something in the car when she pulled onto the bridge on Highway 97 that crosses the gorge, and when I looked up I saw we were 300 feet over the river at the bottom of the gorge. I gasped out loud — some of you may know that I’m afraid of heights and of bridges in particular (remember my Capilano Suspension Bridge story?), and I wasn’t quite prepared to find myself in that spot. Truly breath-taking. We stopped for a while to walk around on the old two-lane bridge. This photo is of the nearby railroad bridge over the gorge, and you can’t see it because of the angle of the sun and the color of the sky at that time of day, but the Three Sisters of the Cascade Range are sticking their heads up over the bridge.

the Crooked River Gorge

Next, we headed further north towards the town of Madras and the Cove Palisades State Park, where the Crooked River flows into Lake Billy Chinook, and you can stand on the edge of the cliffs and look down into the water hundreds of feet below, or miles and miles into the distance at Mt Hood, Mt Jefferson, Three Fingered Jack, the Three Sisters, and Broken Top.

Broken Top and the Three Sisters from the Cove Palisades

By this time I was feeling like old friends with the peaks of the Cascades. Each time I saw them from a different vantage point was a reunion of sorts.

view of Mt Hood from the Cove Palisades

Thank you, Marilyn, for making my day.

another view of Mt Hood

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Cascade Lakes Byway

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On my recent writing retreat in Bend, Oregon, I spent part of one afternoon driving the Cascade Lakes Byway, proclaimed (by whom?) to be one of the top ten scenic byways in the U.S. I would have to agree that it’s in my own personal top ten — but have I even been on more than ten scenic byways? It’s hard to say.

The drive starts out with Mount Bachelor, majestic and spectacular in all its snow-covered glory. I don’t know why it is that snow-covered peaks are majestic, whereas rocky ones are rugged and jungle-covered ones are lush, but that’s just the way it is — there is no other word for the Cascades but majestic.

Now, I read before going on the drive that just around the bend from Mount Bachelor I would pass a lake with a perfect reflection of Mount Bachelor that rivals that first glimpse of the mountain in its majesty. I cannot attest to the veracity of this claim, however, having made my drive in the middle of June, when many of the lakes on the north end of the byway are still covered in snow.

Sparks Lake

I’m sure the drive would be all the more breath-taking later in summer when these lakes are no longer frozen, but this Texas girl is still impressed with vast expanses of snow that locals to this area might not find all that interesting. It was such a treat to me to drive along a road with plowed snow packed to within a couple feet of my lane.

near Mt Bachelor, on the Cascade Lakes Byway
- snow in June!

Elk Lake was the first of the lakes I came to that wasn’t covered in snow or frozen. The views of the mountains weren’t as stunning as I would have hoped, with a layer of clouds settling in over the peaks, but I took what I could get.

Elk Lake

Several miles on, I came to what I think might have been part of Crane Prairie Reservoir. This is the best I could get on my phone’s camera without distorting the picture — the white birds in this photo are cranes (or pelicans or storks, I honestly don’t know, I’m sort of making this up) hanging out with some Canadian geese.

waterfowl

After I took this picture, I noticed a huge dark bird circling directly over my head. It perched in a tree right above me and didn’t take off again until I began to drive away. I got a good look at its white throat and belly and consulted the North American bird app on my phone (don’t laugh — it’s come in handy several times, except as far as cranes go, but that’s a topic for another blog post) to decide that it was an osprey. I swear it winked at me as I headed on down the byway.

Somewhere along in that stretch of road, you begin to see miles and miles of lava fields — lava flow frozen in time. Miles and miles of black lava. It’s fascinating to think of the volcanos that produced this rock, once burning hot, now solidified in a 100-foot tall river of rock.

There you have it. Go drive the Cascade Lakes Byway the next chance you get.

(Still to come: North of Bend, Lava Butte, and the Painted Hills)

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Writing Retreat in Bend, Oregon

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As I said in my previous post, I booked a yurt in Central Oregon for a little writing getaway and had to take the only reservation available between June and October. In my mind, June is late enough in the year to qualify as summer, but my mind still isn’t used to winters in the Northwest — winters that last longer than mid February, like I grew up knowing in Texas. So last week’s trip to Wallowa Lake got snowed out, and I regrouped for Bend this week.

Oregon, oh you wonderful, beautiful, amazing Oregon, I cannot begin to decide on a favorite spot in all the state. I have a deep fondness for the coast and for the Columbia River Gorge, but now Bend and Central Oregon are competing for my affections. I couldn’t have picked a better spot for a writing retreat, and thankfully the weather cooperated this time around. I spent four days camping in a yurt at Tumalo State Park on the Deschutes River just outside of Bend — it was a little more crowded and noisier than Ft Stevens was in early April, but it proved to be perfect nevertheless. Easy access to town, to gas and food, to the highways and byways leading to all the glorious wonders of our Creator’s creation nearby.

the Deschutes River at Tumalo State Park

I got to have dinner the first evening with friends I hadn’t seen in a few years, and they showered me with recommendations and maps and tour information for the remainder of my time. Look for a post on Cascade Lakes Byway soon, a spectacular driving tour I wouldn’t have taken if it weren’t for their suggestion. They also gave me a copy of a guide for a walking tour in historic downtown Bend — and unlike some towns that claim “historic” downtown areas, I felt Bend actually qualified, with its architecture dating to the early twentieth century and its ties to the Oregon lumber mill industry. (Random facts gleaned from the Heritage Walk info: Clark Gable once worked at the Brooks-Scanlon mill, and Amelia Earhart’s home with her husband G.P. Putnam is on the tour.)

Drake Park in Bend, Oregon

For a good 360-degree view of Bend, the desert and Blue Mountains to the east, and the snow covered peaks of the Cascades to the west, I walked up Pilot Butte one afternoon. Don’t make the mistake, like I did, of calling it a “mountain” to a local. I guess it’s bigger than a hill but doesn’t qualify as a mountain when you’re in sight of the Three Sisters, Mt Washington, Mt Bachelor, and the like. Whatever you call it, it’s a good way to get an overview of the surrounding areas, with great interpretive displays (and a restroom, for the record) at the summit.

And lest I be accused of just gallivanting around Oregon every chance I get, I actually did write each morning in my yurt. I kept my regular writing schedule, working breakfast to lunch time, and put more words on the page each day than I had been averaging the previous week. A productive and beneficial writing retreat, indeed.

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Oregon Trail and a Change of Plans

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After my friend Jen and I stayed in a yurt at Ft Stevens State Park in Oregon in April, I had the idea to try out another couple of state parks with yurts as a writing retreat while working on West Texas Interlude. Yurts are a perfect way to camp and write — they have locks on the door, so I feel safe camping by myself and being all solitary and writerly, and they have electricity, so I can plug in my laptop. Perfect.

They’re so perfect, they’re extremely popular and booked out months in advance. So, when I got around to looking for places to stay and write this summer, my options were limited. Very limited. I had two dates available in June at two parks, or I could wait until October. I quickly booked the June dates.

And so, on Tuesday morning I set out for Wallowa Lake in northeastern Oregon — Oregon’s “dry side,” the half of the state that, unlike Portland and the coast, gets lots of sun and little precipitation. Except when I set off, it was pouring rain in Kennewick — and it poured on me all the way to the Blue Mountains, where the rain changed to snow. Snow on June 5.

No worries, I thought, I’ll just make my first stop of the trip, and surely it will clear up and I’ll be able to enjoy the Wallowa Mountains and Wallowa Lake this afternoon and tomorrow in a less rainy/snowy/cloudy haze.

That first stop was the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center outside Baker City, a fantastic little visitor center that I highly recommend if you’re ever in northeastern Oregon. They accept the National Parks Annual Pass, which was the main reason I went out of my way to see it on this trip — why not drive a little further if you don’t have to pay the $8 entrance fee?

at the top of Flagstaff Hill

I do, however, recommend not going on a day with high winds and rain, so that you can walk the 2 mile path from the interpretive center on Flagstaff Hill down to the ruts from the Oregon Trail. Just standing at the top of the hill to take a couple of photos of covered wagons was miserable for me — the hood of my rain jacket alternately flew over my eyes and threatened to strangle me, or it violently jerked me backwards. As much as I wanted to make the walk, I was too chicken/lazy/reasonable to do it.

view of the location of old Oregon Trail ruts, from the top of Flagstaff Hill

A few facts I learned at the interpretive center: One out of every ten people who started the trail died along the way. That adds up to one grave for every 80 yards of the 2,000 mile trail. The “prairie schooner” style wagons had a wagon bed 4 feet by 10 feet in size — that’s the same size as one of the raised garden beds at Quinault Community Garden (pretty big for a garden bed, small for a vehicle that holds all your earthly possessions). Some single men skipped the wagon and oxen all together and just walked the trail to Oregon, pushing their belongings in a wheel barrow. For 2,000 miles. That is a heart bent on emigrating.

By the time I finished up at the Oregon Trail and made my way back to La Grande and the turn-off to Wallowa Lake, the forecast hadn’t cleared up like I’d so optimistically assumed it would. Thick clouds still surrounded the mountains, and the online reports still called for a flood watch on the Grande Ronde River until late that afternoon. Snow and rain showers would continue through the night — the snow would be at levels above 4,500 feet, and the campground where I’d booked my yurt was at 4,600 feet. So much for the dry side of Oregon.

As much as I would love to say I’d camped in the snow in June, I’d already had enough driving on slick roads with busily flip-flopping windshield wipers for one day, and I didn’t relish giving up the interstate for a 2-lane mountain road for the next hour and a half in those conditions. Not for an overnight trip where I wouldn’t even see the mountains because of all the clouds and fog surrounding me. I headed for home (back through the snow in the Blues) and will try again next week for a writing retreat at a yurt in Bend, Oregon.

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Inspired by “Dear Photograph”

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A couple of weeks before my final research trip for West Texas Interlude, a friend sent me a one line email: Hey, have you ever heard of dearphotograph.com? I think you should do one on your March road trip!

Not content to stop with one, we printed out a few shots from my grandfather’s slides to take along with us. Here’s what we came up with…

Monahans Sandhills, fall 1957

 

Judge Roy Bean’s place in Langtry, November 1957

 

sign at the Pecos River Bridge, November 1957

 

Kit Carson rock outside Fort Davis, 1958 or ’59

The last one is kind of fudged — we never found the exact spot, although we thought we were close.

This…

and this…

are what it looked like when we scoured our locations for just the right angle. No one really asked what we were doing, although one girl napping on a picnic table beside the road gave me a dirty look, presumably because I interrupted her by climbing on a rock a hundred feet away. Oh well.

P.S. We’ve submitted a photo to Dear Photograph — I’ll keep you posted if they use it. In the meantime, you should check out their site.

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Emory Peak in the Chisos Mountains

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The day after Thanksgiving in 1957, Bob and Ann piled the kids in the station wagon and drove from Sanderson, Texas, to Big Bend National Park. Sanderson to Jacksboro was too far a drive for the family to make for the holiday, so they stayed down on the border and made a true holiday of it by visiting the park.

Santa Elena Canyon, 1957 (notice the height of the people standing by the river, on the right)

For the last leg of my West Texas Interlude trip with Pat and Randy, we ended up at the Chisos Mountain Lodge in the national park — Bob and Ann had made a day trip of it, going all the way to Santa Elena Canyon on the west side of the park and back to Sanderson in one day, but we opted to stop for a couple of nights in the mountains. Shortly after we arrived, we went out for a 1.5 mile loop hike near the lodge and visitor’s center, taking in views of the Window below us. As we set out on the loop, we paused at the map posted at the trailhead, and I recalled a vivid memory of standing in that place with Jen and Janel a year and a half ago, after we’d finished our 5 mile hike to the Window and back. I remembered looking at the dotted lines on the map for the South Rim and Emory Peak and hoping that I would get to come back and see more of the park.

And in that moment of remembrance, I decided that I needed to make it happen. I needed to climb up to the top of Emory Peak. So the next morning, I took my laptop out of my backpack, put in a few snacks and a couple of water bottles instead, and I set off. I tried not to focus too much on the signs posted several times in the first mile of my trip, warning that this is bear and mountain lion country.

I’ll be very honest — I hope I never, ever see a bear or mountain lion. My fear of them is very rational (they’re predators!), so it’s not at all a phobia. Pretty much every step of the way to the top and back I was certain that something was about to lunge for me from the forest. I heard growling a few times (maybe). I also heard something swishing along in the brush beside me once or twice, in step with me, stalking me, stopping when I stopped. It turned out to be my ponytail swishing against the top of my backpack, but for a few moments I was sure my time was up.

Texas Mandrone and agave, on the Pinnacles Trail leading to Emory Peak Trail

For more than an hour, I hiked without seeing another soul coming or going. I was beginning to wonder if I’d made a mistake in coming up there on my own — Pat and Randy and I all felt that it would be crowded enough on the last weekend of spring break that I wouldn’t actually be hiking alone all day. Nine miles is a long way by yourself, just you and the predators. During that first hour I sang to myself and the trees and the Mexican bluejays that hopped along the trail in front of me. After that, I leapfrogged with a couple of families and passed a few other people on the way to and from the top, solitary no more. My thoughts changed from certainty that I was being stalked, to wondering will my size in comparison with the others make me easy prey, or will it make me look less appetizing (I don’t exactly have a lot of meat on my bones)?

Four-and-a-half miles later, I reached the top of Emory Peak. Technically, I didn’t go all the way to the highest point. The last 20 or 25 feet are a scramble up some rocks where you get a 360 degree view — but I and a few others in the groups I’d arrived with were satisfied to watch the brave few climb up there while we enjoyed our slightly-less-than 360 degree view. I am unashamed that I only made it to 7800 feet and not 7825.

view from Emory Peak

I sat down on a rock to snack and rest and chat with the others before heading back down, when I realized I got a cell signal for the first time since we’d arrived in the park. I had received text and voice messages, and with my phone to my ear I heard the guy next to me say, “You’re getting a signal up here? Is that why you made the hike?”

“Yeah, I came up here to check my voicemail.”

view of the Chihuahuan Desert from Emory Peak

I made it back down to the lodge without seeing any bears or mountain lions, nor any prickly pear in bloom (almost, but not quite). Sitting at the restaurant patio with cold drinks later in the afternoon, Randy told me about this article about a mountain lion attacking a 6-year-old kid in February, causing them to close all the Chisos Mountain trails while they tracked the lion — which they didn’t find. Turns out the kid was attacked between the lodge and the restaurant. I later dug around on the NPS website and found a listing of mountain lion sightings in Big Bend for the month of February — one of the seven sightings for the month was at “Chisos Mountains Lodge, room 206, top of stairs.” I was sitting on my bed in room 215 when I read this. I guess I’m just as safe on Emory Peak as I am on the way to breakfast.

(For anyone who ended up at this blog because you’re looking to hike Emory Peak, I did the 9 mile round-trip hike with a 2500 foot elevation gain in 5.5 hours — and I highly recommend it, especially if you’ve already been on a lot of the other trails in the park. It’s amazing to stand at the top and look down at the places where you’ve already hiked.)

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Water in Scorched Places

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Several years ago a friend gave me a Chinese scroll for Christmas. On it are a painting of a tree in delicate lines of green beside a small stream and the words of Isaiah 58:11 in Chinese calligraphy:

And the LORD will guide you continually

and satisfy your desire in scorched places

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters do not fail.

A few of my wall hangings became moldy after enduring the steamy heat of several rainy seasons in Jinghong, and they had to be thrown away — but my scroll from Isaiah survived and hangs on my wall on the desert side of Washington today.

I was reminded of the words and the image of the tree by water as I drove through the desert between Balmorhea and Fort Davis in West Texas. Looking out across the landscape, I saw the foothills of the Davis Mountains covered in brush and cactus and yucca, rolling up from Balmorhea at 3,100 feet to Fort Davis at 5,050 feet. Much of this land still bears the charred black evidence of last April’s wildfires that burned more than 310,000 acres.

Here and there along the way a short line of cottonwoods would appear in a burst of bright, fresh green upon the brown and grey and dull yellow of the desert backdrop. From my far-off vantage point, it was hard to tell how a stand of trees could suddenly show up in the desert, how something so tall and so green and so evident of spring could exist in a land parched of moisture. Cross that distance to look up close, however, and you’ll find a small creek or an irrigation canal carving a curve in that corner of the desert. Where there is water, tree roots dig deep.

This afternoon the roots of my heart dig deep and search for Jesus, the living water that satisfies my desires in scorched places.

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