Thursday, September 29, 2011

Off to Onion Country USA!

After dinner with the kids, we went back to the "Beast" to get ready to shove off first thing in the morning and turned on the final game of the Mariners (read: last defeat in a defeating season!) while we listened to music.

We were able to get to the Fred Meyer gas station for cheap ($3.59/gal) gas but it takes so much longer with the required gas station person filling  your tank...why does Oregon require that??  Off to Caroline's to say goodbye, get g-kids kisses and head out.

It's a bleak landscape between Bend and Burns, OR.  We crossed Starvation Ridge (you can imagine traversing this area of little water and no vegetation--save sage and juniper--in a covered wagon saying "we're going to starve here!"), Stinking Water Creek and arrived at Drink Water Pass....gulp!

Deer hunting season begins Saturday, and so lots of hunters from the area are headed out for the mountains to set up their tents/RV's/chairs, etc. to stay the weekend and hunt.  We got a smile from some of the folks that passed us on the route--the best were the ones in the pickups pulling a trailer containing a converted golf cart painted in camo, a plastic chair and gun carrier...

As we head through Vale, OR we move into a much more agricultural area, alfalfa ready for its last cutting, potatoes, apples, cukes and lots and lots of onions!  We moved into "Onion Country USA" without our knowledge...but there was the huge billboard proclaiming it so we knew we had arrived!  (They ship over 22,000 loads each season!)  Many, many hundreds (thousands?) of acres of onions...onions everywhere:  on the farmtruck, on the semi, in the field, on the side of the road, in the ditch, etc.  EVERYWHERE!  Just so you know, the logo for the area is a smiling onion with cowboy hat in hand!

We needed to stop near Boise so chose Caldwell, where we bypassed 'Stinker Fuel' for the more well-known Flying J...dinner at the MOHO and an early bed for an early rise tomorrow to SLC!

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