The Rest Was Silence

I'm quietly sitting in Lisa and Gregory's living room in Mosier, OR. I can hear distant cars on the highway, the occasional train, and if I stand up I can see a little light reflecting on the Columbia River. It is so peaceful here. I love to visit their house. The kids and Elijah have gone to bed in the trailer which is set up outside. The faintest smell of fall is in the air. Gregory has been harvesting pumpkins from their patch. We are only an hour from Portland, our final destination, but it is so calm and comfortable here that we have decided to stay a couple days before moving on to the end of the journey. Mosier feels like the very beginning of the Pacific Northwest. The desert wasteland of the last several days lasted just until about two bends in the river before Mosier. When you get here suddenly there are trees, and the air has more moisture, and the little town is beautiful and filled with little flower gardens. It's a small town with a good local coffe shop (probably the reason Elijah is excited to stay), and two boys near Eli and Izzy's age who live in the house in front of this house. We couldn't have asked for a better soft landing. Allowing us to inch our way back into reality, shake a little of the dust off, and prepare for our next big adventure, finding a house to live in and getting the kids into a new school. We've been on the road for two months. What a ride we've had. We have seen so many sights, visited so many people, driven through so many states, all in our little mini-van with the whole family close in together the whole way. I've shared a lot of the adventure in these blog entries, with pictures of the sights, and thoughts about the state of country. What I didn't share as much of was the squabbles, and tantrums, the late night melt downs, the fever of being in the car too long, the moments when all the kids were homesick at the same time and wanted to go back to SB, the times when I had to struggle to entertain the kids get Elijah work space and get us to the next city five hours away. It's been a really intense experience, there are memories we will always have, and a lot of them are good. And now we are all ready to stop living out of the car.

One of the greatest things about this moment in Lisa and Gregory's living room in Mosier, OR is that nobody else is here, I am all alone in the house and the silence is blissful.

Niagra Falls of the West, in Idaho!

We were driving across Idaho trying to figure out where to get lunch. Based on the Yelp reviews it seemed that Twin Falls was our best bet. We later discovered that on Sunday this is not actually a great choice. The entire downtown seems to be under the influence of the Agape Cafe's Christian vibe and have completely shut down. But before we even knew about this we turned off to go towards Twin Falls and drove over a bridge that spanned a stunning canyon. Elijah exclaimed, "pull over let's look at it."

The Snake River

Boy were we glad we did. It was the Snake River which winds all the way through to Oregon. Not only was it beautiful, but we discovered that very close near by was a giant water fall called Shoshone Falls. We decided that after lunch we would go looking for it.

Shoshone Falls near Twin Falls, Idaho

The falls are an easy drive and you can park right near a stunning look out. The entire canyon area around the falls is beautiful. It turns out that Shoshone Falls is often called the Niagra Falls of the West.

The Rock Canyon Above the Falls is Stunning.

The colors of the falls contrasted against the rock are so beautiful.

There was a rainbow in the spray.

Eli really loved the falls and the surrounding canyon. It was one of his favorite places we went to on this trip.

The Canyon below the falls.

Even though I had never heard of them it turned out that they were very well known. The canyon area is so well known in fact that Evel Knievel had tried to jump the canyon on a rocket powered motorcycle once. Elijah bought a post card about it.

Apparently in the spring the water gushes over the rocks with amazing force and most of the rock you see in these pictures is not visible.

It really is the Niagra Falls of the West.

It might be worth it to come back some time in the spring and check that out. But we'll try to come on a weekday when the restaurants are all open.

Our Second Flat Tire

We were finally heading out from Boise, ID on our way to Oregon. We were all still sick with colds and so had decided we would only go as far as Pendleton today, a four hour drive. We didn't think we had any more energy in us than that. I had just put on the cruse control as we headed out of town, when all of a sudden a horrible noise and a lot of bumping, and the guy in the lane next to me pointing and motioning for me to pull over, made me look in my rear view mirror. We were shedding huge clumps of rubber. I realized that the other trailer tire, the one we hadn't changed for the spare, was falling apart in the middle of highway 84. I managed to keep my head and pull over to the shoulder. Elijah pushed the hazard lights button and we crawled along the shoulder at 5 miles per hour all the way to the exit. Going that slow we had time to look around. I realized that the exit we were approaching was the type of exit that had a lot of car dealers, lube shops, and a great big Wall-mart. Amazing luck! We drove into the Wall-mart parking lot which was vast enough that detaching our trailer and leaving it there while we went hunting for a tire wasn't going to put anybody out. The RV parts place, and the tire place that guy sent us to, were both an easy drive from where we were. The tire guy estimated an amount of time that was just long enough to go to Starbucks grab some coffee and snacks and get back to pick up the tires. We drove back to the trailer and put two new tires on the trailer and reattached everything. All in all it took us three hours and we were back on the road. Not bad for an extreme blow out. Guess it's a good thing our road trip must come to an end soon. Things are starting to fall apart at the seams. We still did the four hour drive, but man was it a lot harder after a dramatic tire change.

Vast and Seemingly Endless

On our way through the southwest I had failed to document the vast empty spaces that wized by our car window, partially because we just wanted to drive through it instead of stopping, and partly because while it was vast and empty it didn't really leave an impression until after the crowded forested east coast provided a stunning contrast. So as we reentered the western part of the United States farther north I decided that quality be damned I was going to document this vastness through the window of the car as we drove. We still didn't want to stop, but I couldn't help being struck with the seemingly never ending emptiness of the west. Here is the result of that study as we drove through Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho.

Our first snow sighting happened in Colorado just before we crossed the boarder into Wyoming.

We stopped in Cheyenne, WY for coffee and it was incredibly cold and everything was covered in snow. The boys were gleeful.

It seemed like we would be threatened with ice and snow through the length of Wyoming. It was at this point I mentioned how glad I was that I suggested we skip Yellowstone National Park, since it was almost mid-October. We looked up the low in Yellowstone for that night. It was expected to be 8 degrees fahrenheit. That would be uncomfortable in a trailer tent equipped only with summer sleeping bags.

This is the Lincoln Memorial in Wyoming. Yeah, we didn't know it was there either. This is placed very near the continental divide.

We went over a hill and the snow disappeared and Wyoming became high desert.

It turns out that in this part of Wyoming the continental divide circles a high desert basin, called the great divide basin. It was strange that it felt like it was the top of the world and the elevation was as high as 7000 feet at times, but it was so flat.

We stopped in Rawlins, WY for lunch and had descent Thai food. All the towns seem so western, sparse with a spattering of old architecture and a lot of unpopulated streets.

This is what Nevada had looked like though I had never gotten any pictures. It's what a surprisingly large part of the west actually looks like. Nothing for miles and miles.

Around Salt Lake City there were what looked like big mountains, but when I think about it, the entire state of Wyoming on the other side of those mountains is the height of the tops, so really we were just down in a gully.

Utah was more of the same, but with some farms.

Dust spirals moving along the vast emptiness.

As we entered Idaho we saw the occasional tree.

But there were still plenty of places where there weren't any trees.

The window of this gas station says it all, "Welcome to the Middle of Nowhere." Hannah enjoyed that statement so much that from then on when ever she woke up from a nap she would say "We're in the middle of nowhere!"

One thing that can be said for Nowhere, they have Alpacas!