Wallawa Lake road trip with Bryce

Dear Family,

Last weekend, Bryce and I left after Sacrament Meeting (and after making lunch, and after changing a spark plug in my car and after deciding not to take it and after repacking bryce's car and after stopping in on my monthly home teaching visit to Foushee's who fed us a little lunch and dessert and good gospel discussion - this is how Pixton's leave town) and began our road trip. We drove in Bryce's car in 100 degree weather with no air conditioning and a whistling windshield trim toward Wallawa Lake in the northeastern corner of Oregon. In the extreme heat, we found it advisable to stop for refreshment and sustenance at the last Burgerville for 24,789 miles, as the billboard said, and humbly partake of a large raspberry shake, some fries and a hamburger. Heading into the mountains, it is always good to stock up on things you may need in reserve, such as a bajillion calories in a quite heavenly concoction. Having had my spiritual experience for the Sabbath, I was ready to proceed on the journey across the high desert of Oregon and into the Wallawa Mountains.

Heading up the grade into the Blue Mountains, we drove into a lightning storm and rain pounded on the windshield. This storm was unexpected and it was beautiful and cool. At dusk, we were lucky to find a campsite along the Minam river in the dark. I sat at our picnic table in the dark and wrote in my journal on my laptop - the remote location, the rush of the river closeby and the starry sky above was quite a contrast to my high-tech screen, the only light in our camp. We slept in the open air and it was good rest.

Monday morning we drove to the Wallawa valley, and ate breakfast in Enterprise. I found that the proprietor and cook of our restaurant was a former client of mine from Lake Oswego. After our excellent meal, I had a good chat with Steve Lear while he worked the grill in the kitchen. He gave up his business and Lake Oswego home and moved to Enterprise to run a restaurant. He's on the city council and is a civic leader there. What a change of life. Would you have the courage to do this?

Next we went up the hill to check out the airport. We found the LDS church right next to the runway and at the runway we found a friend of my brother Bobby, Hank and his wife Kim with their Husky. They were visiting his sister in Wallawa. Small world.

We drove through Joseph, a very artsy community with beautiful bronze sculptures on each corner, to Wallawa Lake - very picturesque. We took the tram up to the peak of Mt. Howard. This was the highlight of the trip so far. Very incredible view, somewhat scary ride, tame animals at the top that ate from our fingers, chipmunks, squirrels, deer, birds, etc. We overlooked a canyon and the Eagle Cap Wilderness in the distance. Spectacular. Down in the canyon again, I filled my water bottle from the crystal clear water cascading down from the snow caps. I don't remember seeing water so clear before. It was cold and delicious.

After Wallawa Lake we drove further east and south to an overlook on the ridge of Hells Canyon - formed by the Snake River on the border between Oregon and Idaho. Beautiful wildflowers. We camped in a canyon descending to the Snake River. The next morning we drove to Halfway (it's not half way, it's all the way!) where we stopped for breakfast. The waitress cut Bryce off in the middle of his order with her hand in his face. Snarl. When she finally brought my breakfast, she slammed it down on the table in front of me and snarled at someone else at the next table. Bryce ordered orange juice. She grabbed it out of a cooler, shook it twice and plopped it down in front of him, still in the plastic bottle. We laughed and felt we had gotten our money's worth in entertainment alone.

We drove home on 84, foregoing our earlier plan to drive through the Blue Mountains and home along the John Day river. We'd had enough camping, enough winding roads and enough heat. We stopped by Horse Tail falls and Multnomah Falls and Benson Lake picnic area (checking it out for a ward activity) and came home, glad to be in such a nice place we could call home. We had a good time. In the evening Kaaren and I joined Skye and Jared for the fireworks at Fort Vancouver. Came home pretty tired. I go to work to recuperate, it seems, from the weekends.

So this was a road trip, a journey together to explore a little bit of America. We had some dumb conversations and some good conversations about mountains and valleys and philosophy and the search for quality (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance style), forgiveness, independence and growth, relationships with girls and with cars and other imponderables and we came home richer together.

Dad