Tuesday - The Johnsons came over early this morning and announced their very difficult decision to head back home to get Mazie checked out by her own doctors, following the ER doctor's advice. Mazie was especially upset to have to leave our trip, but I think we all agreed that it was probably the right decision. They were on the road before 9:00 a.m., heading back to Chiloquin to the campground we stayed at for 13 days.
This campground, and the town of Prineville, were both wonderful, and we have enjoyed our days here.
Horse racing starts here on Wednesday and we saw some of the horse trailers beginning to arrive yesterday. I wish that would have started before we left -- it would have been practically at our back door.
Joe and I ran into the grocery store this morning, then we and the Brundiges got hooked up, fueled, and were on the road just after 11:00. Check-in at our next campground isn't until 3:00 so we were not in a hurry. We drove 93 miles, through some beautiful country, and got off the road about 2:45. As we left the Prineville area, we drove past a huge carrot field. Marilyn had found out they grow carrots for seed here, and these plants appeared to be in full bloom.
We stopped in the town of Madras at a junk shop that Collins had visited on Sunday. They grow lavendar in this area but we didn't recognize any lavendar fields. As we left the junk shop, we saw a gaggle of geese across the highway.
As we drove through the hills and valleys of North Central Oregon, we saw beautiful fields of hay -- they grow a lot of hay in Oregon -- and we had great views of our mountains -- Jefferson and Washington. We finally came in sight of Mt. Hood, way off in the distance. All of these mountains still have a lot of snow on top.
We stopped at a rest stop just outside of Maupin for lunch. The weather was so nice we ate outside at a picnic table, then took a walk before getting back on the road.
There are some pretty deep canyons between the hills and valleys, and cattle usually dot the hillsides. They raise a lot of cattle in Oregon.
Coming into Tygh Valley, we crossed the Deschutes River again. This was a pretty crooked road, but great views.
As we are coming off the hill, we see Collins above us.
The town of Tygh Valley was small but quite pretty, with at least one mural and hanging baskets of flowers along the street. We saw some rafts on the river -- they do white-water rafting along the river here.
We had a pretty steep pull out of this town, then another up/down for the next town, Wamic, an even smaller town. We passed a blueberry field just before we got to our campground. Our campground is really off the beaten path, but we finally got here -- saw two deer on the way in -- and got checked in. Our sites are not very level, but there is a nice lake right here, with a dock and a beach area.
They have cabins and boats for rent, and a decent restaurant. We think we are about 40 miles from the Dalles and the Columbia Gorge, but this was the closest campground we could find that had any vacancies. There is some kind of boating event on the Columbia River this weekend, which was the source of our problem with reservations. It appears that most of Oregon has weekend events of some kind that get people out and moving around, whether it is a quilt show, a bicycle marathon, a regatta, motorcycle events, etc. Roxanne said it seems like everyone is coming to Central Oregon this summer, and she would like to have just one weekend without so many visitors in town. We are seeing evidence of this as we travel through.
We are here for 4 nights, so we will see what we can discover in this area.
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