13 July 2012

What do you think of geography wise in terms of eastern Oregon?  I certainly didn’t think of high desert country.  That’s exactly what we drove through today, mile after mile of brown desert with minimal trees and desert bushes sprinkled here and there.  The only green we saw as from irrigation.  The county closest to the Idaho state line produces over 1 million pounds of onions, plus of course potatoes (OreIda), corn, wheat and a variety of different types of hay.  Almost all of this is thanks to either Mathew or Snake River irrigation.

We are now in Idaho.  The eastern part of Oregon and south central western part of Idaho are considered part of the historical Oregon Trail.   The first part of the road in Idaho was windy!  Roger ended up pulling over and did a tire check, because we were being pushed around so much.   Fortunately there wasn’t a problem.  After we got off of I-84 and headed more east than southeast, the wind died down.  We passed through several big acreage grass fire areas on I-84.   Roger measured one black area of over 3 miles on the Interstate.  There was also a big one on US 20, which was in the rocks and made the dark stone darker, but all the grass was gone.  We passed through Sawtooth National Forest and wondered if there were ever any trees in the Sawtooth forest?  All we saw was sagebrush plains.  There were several “open range” signs that lead us to believe that the area was actually part of the Camas Prairie or Snake River Plains as indicated on the Idaho state map.   Once we got off of I-84 and onto US 20 we drove in and out of light rain showers, which made this part of the plains green, whatever the exact name of the area is.  The elevation we were driving at was about a mile high and the mountains that we could see off in the distance were listed as having summits of about 7500 feet or so.  So I guess we were still in what gets called “high country”.  There were snow sticks along US 20, athough not nearly as tall as what we’ve seen elsewhere.

We’re spending the night in Arco Idaho.  It is about 20 miles east from the entrance to Craters of the Moon National Historical Monument.  The game plan for tomorrow is to go back to CMNHP and do the loop and any walks that might interest us, from there we’ll head to Utah.  We drove a lot today, over 450 miles.