19-July-99 Pocatello to Bend
.
.
.
The floor in my mom's kitchen was sticky when we came up for breakfast. Arlene remembered that several unopened cans of Minute Maid grape soda had been empty at the party yesterday, and sure enough, there was another leaky unopened can in the plastic bag of soda cans we brought back from the party.
We got a pretty early start and headed west on I-86. After all the years when the speed limit was 55 nationwide, it was a trip to see the signs for the speedometer check in Idaho that said “75 mph 1 mile = 48 seconds” I had the cruise control set just about right, so those five miles passed in 240 seconds give or take three.
We stopped at a rest area near Massacre Rocks State Park, named for an incident on the Oregon Trail. I-86 runs through the Snake River plain, the same route that the Oregon Trail followed at that point. Three summers ago we were birding in that area and saw a lazuli bunting on a bush in the same binocular field as Oregon Trail wagon ruts. I was a tiny bit confused about Massacre Rocks; I was thinking of Register Rock, also along I-86, where Oregon Trail emigrants had scratched their initials on the rock. Today it's graffitti, but if you did it 153 years ago it's history.
Boise
Ontario info center -- 6 hrs or 5?
US 26, John Day valley
Dinner at Deschutes Brewery
Stranger in the mirror
 | ||||