From Brown to Green

My detour through Yellowstone took me off of the Oregon Trail for awhile but I rode south and picked-up US 20 which parallels a lot of the trail. I soon learned Route 20 could take me all the way to Chicago with not so much as one mile of interstate "slab." Looks like a way home!

But first, a stop at the world's largest hot mineral springs at Thermopolis, Wyoming..

Mineral hot springs at Thermopolis, Wyoming

The road south from Cody, WY was a very hot 100 miles. I was glad to learn that I could avail myself of the mineral springs at no cost due to a peculiar Indian treaty dating from 1896. Seems the whole area was part of the Shoshone Indian Reservation until the white man began to covet the sacred "smoking waters". Congress decided the area should be a park and "bought" it from the Native Americans, signing yet another treaty with two Shoshone and Arapaho chiefs. It allowed for free access to the springs for anyone of any color and to this day remains a "free entry" Wyoming State Park. Soaking in the public mineral pool is limited to 20 minutes.

Some mining towns in Wyoming have seen their day

Roadside camping can be spectacular

Wyoming up close

Abandoned school house west of Douglas, Wyoming

Ayers Natural Bridge near Glenrock, WY was a stop along the Oregon Trail

As the road led me east from Wyoming to Nebraska, the rivers and passes gave way to "cattle country" and expansive fields of irrigated alfalfa and other hay grasses. Things got greener and a bit cooler.

Three miles east of Chadron, Nebraska, I just had to stop at the Museum of Fur Trade. Well before Oregon Trail wagon trains, trappers and traders wandered about the plains and the great northwest trading guns and trinkets for hides. Located near the site of the original Bordeaux Creek Trading Post, this museum is billed as the largest of its type in the world. And, of course, every summer, they have the annual Fur Trading Days in Chadron. Second weekend in July.

Downtown Cody, Nebraska...all of it

This is the town of Cody, Nebraska. It has four businesses, only one of which is open past 5:00 PM. And it's not the gas station. With my "low gas" lamp on and 40 miles to the next town, I had no choice but to visit the place that was still in business: Husker's Pub. I am indebted to the bar tender who soon came to my aid with a red jug holding enough gas to get me to Valentine, NE where he promised there would be several filling stations open all night.

Pulling into Valentine, Nebraska...and gas!

As I was leaving Nebraska, I came across this fascinating vintage windmill collection on the side of US 20. They are all from the late 19th and early 20th century and have been lovingly collected and restored by a Mr. Gill, who happens to own the local landfill outside of the town of Jackson. You have to dodge garbage trucks as you wander about, but the Sentinels of the Prairie display is worth a stop, especially if you have a soft spot for agrarian popular culture.

The Top of the World

There are a lot of ways to leave Yellowstone National Park. One of the best is along the Beartooth Highway to the northeast. This is a section of U.S. 212 that traces a series of zigzags and switchbacks along the Wyoming-Montana border to the Beartooth Pass at almost 11,000 feet. Because of its altitude, snowstorms can occur even in the middle of the summer. It is also known as one of the best motorcycle roads in North America and passes by a motel, general store and gas station enterprise billing itself as the "Top of the World."

Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Area

Enough turns to churn your yogurt

The Beartooth Highway

Dry Goods Store: Bear Creek, Montana

Pig races at the Bear Creek Saloon?

Sunset along the Beartooth Highway

Barefoot on the Moon

 After dining on Ramen soup, a pound of western Oregon cherries, and an adequate supply of Full Sail ale from Hood River, I could have picked a "softer" place to camp than the Craters of the Moon National Monument. Good place for astronauts to practice walking; bad place to search for a privy in bare feet.

Originally known as Root Hog, Idaho, Arco is famous not only for the Sawtooth Club which serves many of the 900-plus residents their daily ration of grog, but also for being the very first town to be electrified by nuclear power-- in 1955. This was a benefit of being just up the road from the Argonne National Laboratory's National Reactor Testing Station. Unfortunately, the NRTS made further history in 1961 when it's reactor suffered a melt down, causing three deaths. It was the world's first fatal reactor accident.











Now known as the Idaho National Laboratory, it somehow seemed unwelcoming to tourists like me. Couldn't even buy a postcard.

The Rigby Bowling Lanes and Snack Bar in Rigby, Idaho, appealed to me as the sort of architectural monument to popular culture one finds when traveling the blue highways of America. I've come to expect it. What I did not expect was that Rigby claims to be "The Birthplace of Television." Seems Rigby High School student Philo Farnsworth drew up some early blueprints for a TV and later went on to develop the TV vacuum tube. But there's more: Rigby is also the home of Wayne Quinton, inventor of the treadmill. All of this on US Route 20!

Wagons Ho!

I watched a lot of Ward Bond and Wagon Train on TV when I was a kid. One of my favorite shows. Bond played a surly but paternal wagon train captain who always made things turn out well by the end of the hour. Not so in real life, I learned. Settlers, referred to as emigrants, sought to escape high unemployment, a stock market crash, and constant infectious epidemics in eastern cities in the first half of the 19^th Century. The dream of free land in a country touted to be sunny, warm and fertile-- Oregon-- drew thousands along the old Indian traces that had been the routes of fur trappers and missionaries in the early 1800’s. So many died along the way that by the 1860’s there was a grave every 80 feet along the trail.

I began to follow its course in reverse, hoping it would be less dangerous. The sign was ominous, however.

When emigrants crossed this high pass in eastern Oregon at Flagstaff Hill, they were met by a broad desert valley with a huge singular tree that had served as a guide for hundreds of years. A sequoia, it was chopped down by an emigrant in 1846. No wonder Native Americans stopped offering a welcome hand to the white-man's wagon trains.

 

 

Mt. Hood near the Columbia River Gorge between Oregon and Washington State. Before the Barlow toll "road" was cut around the mountain, emigrants had to float their wagons over the treacherous Columbia River cascades below this point.

The arrival of trans-continental rail ended the wagon train era

 Baker City, Oregon eventually developed along the Oregon Trail, helped considerably by the discovery of gold in the 1860's.  The renovated Geiser Grand Hotel is the town's jewel and has been called the best historic hotel in the west. I stayed at the Oregon Trail Motel which offered a heated pool, free breakfast at the diner next door, and 47 cable channels...but no PBS...and therefore no Sunday night Masterpiece Theater.

Essential services thrive in rural America

In early 1841 the first emigrant wagon train set out from Independence, Missouri. The settlers walked along side—for 6 months and over 2,000 miles--  from the 1840's until the rail road came through in 1869. Riding a motorcycle through this landscape and seeing its dry, harsh environment, I was left in awe of the early white settlers’ courage and tenacity. 

Early trail conveyances

No one modern highway follows the trail exactly but there are quite a few places where one can still see the ruts left by the wagons. The National Park Service and several states have placed historical markers and interpretive displays along the various roads that now run near the original route. When I stood at some of the sites, the sense of history was palpable.

More recent trail-side relics

There is NO RUST in eastern Oregon

Hops, Hops, and More Hops

There are worse places for a man who likes beer to find himself than in Oregon. Actually, there are few places better. Spending a few days in Bend, then taking the slowest, most mountainous road over the McKenzie Pass to Corvallis for a day, and then moving on to Salem for the natioanl gathering of BMW motorcycle riders, I found kindred souls. Several blues bands, a well-stocked beer garden (where I was recruited to serve as a bartender) and about 6,000 serious motorcyclists, many camping out, created just the atmosphere that my retired life needed to inspire further adventures.

Admit it. You knew this is what Oregon looks like!

Roadside in the Willamette Valley

Humulus lupulus-- hops!

With a cooler climate than California, the gently rolling hills surrounding the Willamette are home to some of the best (and most expensive) Pinot Noirs in the world, as well as a high-quality Pinot gris. But to me, Willamette conjures up the tongue-bending wonder of hops, that delightful flower that adds so much interest and character to the various beers I enjoy. It seemed only right to take a few days to sample the fruit of the land.

Not a bad combination

I discovered Oregon has 137 craft brew companies operating 175 breweries in 59 cities. It was a real task to plot out a course that allowed sufficient sampling while still balancing on two wheels. Bend, with a population of about 80,000, has 15 brewing establishments. I decided to completely avoid metropolitan Portland which has 69.

The Deschutes Brewing Company of Bend, Oregon is the fifth largest craft brewer in the country. They us no pelletized hops but only whole-flower, and they use about 3 tons of these little guys every month to make beers such as Chainbreaker White IPA and Fresh Squeezed IPA, a citrusy brew using mosaic, nugget and citra hops. Their Black Butte XXV limited release beer was available at the brewery when I visited. It was lyrically described as "Like the plot of some eerie mystery you can't put down." Makes you just want to take a sip, doesn't it? For the beer geeks, it uses millennium, cascade and tetnang hops, along with cocoa nibs, mission figs, medjool dates and sour wort.

I would hope to some day develop the palate to discern all the complexities of flavor and taste. I'm sure it would not only enhance my enjoyment of beer but also make me pay more for wine, which right now reaches its sensory ceiling at about $9.00 a bottle. At Deschutes, the "tasters panels" are created from volunteer employees who undergo over a year's training in discerning tastes. How this for moving beyond "bitter, sour, malty, sweet?"

Principled management...and free beer at the end of each shift

Parked in front of Crux Fermentation Project, Bend, OR

 

Boneyard Brwing Co., Bend, OR

                                                                               

 

Boneyard turned out to be my favorite in Bend

Even strip malls have brewpubs in Oregon

Corvallis, Oregon

Lava fields in the Cascade Range

Mechanic turned horseshoe sculpture artist: Pilomath, Oregon

 

 McKenzie Pass

 The McKenzie Highway over the coastal range of mountains west of Corvallis is a wonderful diversion. As I passed over the summit expending little more than the twist of my right hand, I watched dozens of professional bicycle racers competing in one of a week's events in the area, this one going through expansive lava fields and over the McKenzie Summit. US 20 ends at the Pacific Ocean in Oregon  right in front of a motorcycle shop. Stopping seemed a necessity.

This was worth a stop

Motorcycle contraption...long-time travel home to this old timer at the rally

I'll be starting east on Sunday. Hope to follow the Oregon Trail. That should leave me in Independence, MO...which I don't think is very near Chelsea, MI. I better keep an open mind.