Today we headed back into the US. There is something to being back “home”. The landscape, surprisingly, changed pretty quickly. While the Okanagan district purports to be a desert the scenery quickly turned much more arid. What was really interesting though was the abundance of water. We followed the Columbia river down from Canada so there were views of water right next to arid brown hills. There were also fruit crops galore. It was hard to believe that a place that was so dry could sustain the amount of apples, cherries and berries that we saw. Our harvest host, Joseph, let me know that crops that are grown in abundance here are the kinds of crops that do well under strict water control. The dryness of the landscape (they only get 3-6 inches of water a year and most of that is from snowfall in the winter) allows the farmers to precisely control the amount of water that the crops get. So interesting! There is something cool to learn around every corner!
We arrived at Lavendar Ranch (Lavendar Estates – Webb Place) in East Wenatchee, WA. I have never seen a Lavendar Farm before and they run an online lavender boutique where you can buy all things lavender! The farm was pretty, though sadly past peak. I would have loved to see the lavender in bloom. There was a large gravel lot with several other campers already parked. Joseph even set us up with water to fill our tank, for which we were grateful. Water is always appreciated.
It was very hot – over 90 and the sun was brutal so we took it slow on the set up and sat in the shade of the camper to escape the sun. Dinner was a quick salad and grilled salmon. Once the sun started to go down things cooled off pretty quickly and we were able to go for a walk around the farm and watch the beautiful sunset. It is so different out here. The air is very dry and it is so dark and quiet. The loudest noise is the wind that kicked up once the sun set.
One thing I noticed was the lack of trains. For weeks now the trains and train tracks have been our constant companion. I was surprised (though I probably should not have been) how ubiquitous trains are. They are everywhere! Out in the Midwest and in Canada they are miles long! I am sure that they are just as prevalent here in Washington State but I definitely have not seen them as much.
I am interested to see what the rest of the state will look like as we travel through it tomorrow on our way into Oregon.
Oregon has been a fascinating place. Pretty quickly, once we passed the border we noticed that the bushes and pine trees came in a bit more quantity and the arid mountains and hillsides had grasses as opposed to just dirt and dust. The mountains started to recede slowly away, getting smaller and lower in the distance but the terrain definitely became hillier. We were on our way to a Harvest Host (HH) winery in the rural outback of the Copper Belt region in the snake river valley. It was a long drive and it was a hot day but Gigi got us there in the cool AC so there was no complaining. We stopped by an Oregon Trail interpretive center. The center was built on a hillside overlooking a strip of land that still had the actual wheel ruts from the traffic of wagons following the trail. It was kind of interesting and they did a good job of telling the tail of the travails of the people who decided to move out West. It was also a good place to stop and stretch our legs.
We then headed out to our final destination of the day, Copper Belt Wineries. You know the phrase, “turn off the paved road” well yes, that definitely applies. We bumped down about 12 miles of gravely dirt roads which got more and more remote. The hills were beautiful and, if the place had not gotten such great reviews, I might have been worried but after some bumping and jostling we found the winery. There were no grape vines since they had two different locations for growing wine not far from the ranch (which is where we were staying) and did the processing and bottling at the ranch. We were met by Micheal who was Travis (the winemakers) dad who let us know where to fill for water and where to park. The Ranch was definitely a working ranch and they had defined parking spaces with picnic tables for us to park at. We were the only ones there at the time so we got the prime space away from it all. We later found out the HH pretty much saved their business during Covid because people took to the open roads since it was the only thing they could do. To this day HH provides quite a bit of business for them with about 300 people coming through every summer. Pretty amazing. I now understood the dedication to the spaces for HH people. We set up and Michael gave us a wine tasting and history lesson. His family had been homesteading on that land since 1842 and he had some great stories to tell of his family. While we were learning all about the history of the place we were tasting the wine…and I loved it. I liked pretty much every wine he put in front of me. The dryness of the landscape and their wines lended itself to dry ones. They even had a port like wine that was delicious. Michael also gave us a tour of the place. We had a great time. As we were finishing our wine tasting (and buying) another set of HH’s showed up. They seemed very nice and took a spot right by the ranch. They had a cute dog. We started talking and they seemed like a really interesting couple so we invited them up to our camper after they did their tasting. Needless to say it was a really fun and interesting evening. Speaking to Jane and her husband over a bottle of wine was a really enjoyable way to spend the night. While the days are hot the evenings get cool (just like a desert) so it was good socializing and then, sleeping weather. The sunset was gorgeous and, at night, we could hear the coyotes singing and what I think may have been Elk. The landscape was beautiful overlooking 70 acres of meadows and grassland. It is one of the most scenic HH locations we have been to. We saw mule deer and cattle and the sounds of wildlife. At night the stars were amazing to see.
In the morning we got some directions and a recommendation to absolutely visit Hells Canyon so, instead of staying an extra night as we had planned, we decided to move onto Hells Canyon. We had a nice breakfast with our new friends and Travis came out to talk to us. We could have been there all day talking but it was time to move out and see if we could find a campground near the canyon.
The drive took us through another range of mountains and the views were really interesting. Definitely more mountains in view and wide open land. Travis had told us that 70% of Oregan is made up of public land. Ranchers will lease the land from the government for the open grazing of livestock but much of it they did not own. We came into a town called Oxbow about 5 miles outside of hells canyon and found an RV park that had some open sites. We parked, set up and then headed out to see the canyons. Good news, bad news. The bad news is that while we were driving around looking at the Oxbow dam and Power station Gigi got a slice in her tire and started losing air. Good news is that we were close to the campground so we were able to make it back before the tire lost too much air. Jonathan attempted to fix it but it looks like we will need to change it out for the spare and get it fixed while we are out on the road again. The closest town that has anything resembling a car shop is about 30 miles away. We have no signal out here at all. It feels very far away from everything. Wish us luck. I am writing this as Jonathan is attempting to change the tire to spare. Once he does that we will head out to see the canyon.
Our first trip was out to Hells Canyon Dam. There are about 5 dams right along that stretch of the Snake river. The claim to fame here is that it is 800 feet deeper than the grand canyon which makes it the deepest canyon in America. We were looking forward to some fabulous views. The road wound us past beautiful views of the snake river in the canyon. The dam was huge and it was interesting to note that all of the dams were slightly different in style. There was a lot of boating and water recreation in the area. By the time we got to the dam it was already heading into sunset so we did not stay too long and headed back.
We spent the morning in a town called Halfway, Oregon getting the tire fixed. We were lucky that the local repair shop could fit us in otherwise it was another 30 miles to another town). So we got to see Halfway which was actually kind of fun. We were pointed to the only breakfast spot which was a food truck and man, that breakfast burrito was tasty! There was a liquor store called Halfway Sober which made us chuckle and it was a cute town. Interesting fact about Halfway was that during Covid as a promotional stunt they renamed the town temporarily to Half.com as a sponsorship by a company of the same name. Once the tire was done we headed out to the Hells Canyon overlook (23 miles up switchback roads) and then onto a town we were referred to called Joseph (an additional 27 miles up switchback roads). It was a fun day. The ride was both exciting and scary 
We saw mule deer and cattle on the road. The view was nice but not as impressive as it could have been due to the smoke from the local fires. The town was very cute. Touristy but had some nice shops and we had a good lunch at a local place where we got into interesting conversations with the locals. There was a really nice lake nearby where we took a dip to cool off. The daytime temps are brutal but at least the nights are cool.
Wildfires in this part of the country are like weather conditions. They just happen and people deal with them. It is foreign to me but it is just a part of life out here. You are vigilant but you just keep going on because what else are you going to do? In the desert the wildfires tend to be slow moving simply because there is just not that much fuel to fire them so they are a bit easier to control but given that there is such a small population they can still burn hundreds of thousands of acres.
We headed out of hells canyon the next day to a bee farm outside of Boise which was just an overnight spot to get us to Sawtooth. On the way we stopped for gas and we were told that there was a big wildfire at Sawtooth. Once we got signal again (closer to Boise) I was able to do some checking and calling. The Waipiti fire had grown to 122,000 acres right in Sawtooth. I called and they said that half of the park was still open but considering the views were what we were going for and the smoke would be ridiculous we have decided not to bother going to Sawtooth. We spent a quiet night at the bee farm and re-planned our route. Today we are heading for Craters of the Moon National Monument and will find a place to overnight there. Our next stop will be a harvest host near a town called Twin Falls, ID (most likely our last stop in ID) which is supposed to have bikeways and scenic waterfalls. It will also provide us with a civilization respite. We may even make a date night of it and put on clean fancy clothes and go out to a nice dinner. I am also hoping for some WiFi so I can finally do another post.
I am pretty much ready to be done with the desert environment though we still have some of that to go. Our next big stop we are planning on going to is Arches National Park before heading to the Rocky Mountain National Park in CO. It is interesting to think that our remote places will start to become less and less as we start to head East. We still have time and we are enjoying every day as it comes.
Have I told you about the aggressive vegetation yet? No? Well, there is something about desert vegetation – It wants to hurt you. There are these plants we have been running into for awhile now. They look like ground cover and they lure you in by being green but they have spikes all over them, and worse, they have they burs that come off of them and stick into everything. They stick on your shoes and follow you into the camper where they stick on the rug so that when you are in your bare feet they stick into you. Besides the ants and flies, they are my other nemesis. Me and my cordless vacuum do battle about every day. It is still unclear who is winning but I have the upper hand – I will ultimately be leaving their climes…or maybe that is their win condition. Who knows?
Today we traveled to a place called Craters of the Moon national monument in Idaho. Why? Well, why not I guess and it was the pre-requisite 2.5 hour drive that is our daily milestone. This is a weird place but kind of cool. The whole thing is black lava rock. Yes, we have met some people that believe the moon landing was faked here but let’s move on from that. We got here around 2pm and embarked on the loop “scenic” drive that had multiple hiking trails along it. Despite the 90+ degree heat we hit every trail except for 2 of them (due to the fact that they were over 4 miles long each). The lava rock is kind of amazing. You can actually see where the flow stopped and we even hiked through a lava tube cave though we did not see the bats that supposedly live there. We got a campsite here for the night and we are going to an interactive star viewing this evening which I really am looking forward to. A huge bonus of being out here in the remote places is that we have gotten to see the night sky with no light pollution and it is beautiful. We have seen the milky way looking like a blanket of stars and it looks so deep out in the dark. Working on dinner now and looking forward to a great nights sleep in the desert cool before heading out to Twin Falls tomorrow.
Just got back from the star gazing demonstration and it was SO cool! What I did not know is that Crater of the Moon is one of the 200 parks in the world that are considered dark sky parks which means that the light pollution is incredibly low and is perfect for star gazing. I knew that Bryce Canyon was one (and even planned a trip around the new moon to be there at optimal viewing time) but this was a surprise. They even had 3 amateur astronomers there with incredible telescopes. We saw Saturn and the ring around it as well as this dense clusters of stars in another universe! We were so luck to catch this! The sky really is amazing!
We left Craters of the Moon to start heading South. Our stop over was at a little family run goat and dairy farm called Backyard Farms in Filer, ID. We stopped here because it is right outside of a town called Twin Falls. It was supposed to have a beautiful canyon with several waterfalls. It was also a chance for us to grab some civilization, restock up on groceries and have a dinner out. It was a quick 2 hour drive and the farm is adorable and the people who own it are incredibly nice. The feta cheese is amazing! After a cheese tasting and a dinner recommendation we headed on out to Twin Falls to the visitor center to see what there was to see. The canyon really is beautiful it. It had a 6 miles bike trail along the rim so we hopped on our bikes to enjoy the views. It was hot but breezy (pretty much a constant here) and we really had a good time. This is also the location that Evil Kenevil attempted his famous jump across Snake River Canyon. It was almost 50 years to the day. The ramp that was built for that was still here along the biked trail. We also got to see multiple waterfalls and we even met some base jumpers planning to do a jump. Apparently, this is the only place in North America where you do not have to have a permit to base jump so it is a bit of a mecca. They were not sure they were going to jump due to wind conditions, so we decided to take a short walk and then head out to dinner. This is our second attempt at going out and, while it was nice, and we got to watch a bit of football on the TV (not something we have seen often on this trip) we decided we actually like our dinners at the camper better. We went grocery shopping to restock and headed back. The sunset was glorious made even more so by a fire quite a distance away. We are headed south tomorrow out of Idaho and into Utah towards Arches National Park but will need to find a place about halfway. We found out that Arches and Rocky Mountain National Park have timed entry tickets. We were able to get one for Tuesday at Arches but we are still trying for Rocky Mountain National Park. Wish us luck.
Washington State: Lavender Farm, Oregon: Copper Belt Winery
Hells Canyon
Craters of the Moon & Twin Falls
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