By Bob Difley

To most RVers traveling the Pacific Northwest, Oregon consists of three distinct areas: the coast, with its sea stacks, rocky shoreline, and spectacular ocean views; the Willamette Valley’s vineyards, cities, and commerce; and the Cascade Range, with towering snowcapped peaks, lakes, and trout fishing. RVers seldom venture into the fourth area east of Bend, into Eastern Oregon, so you won’t find crowds or much traffic, unless you count the herd of cattle wandering down the middle of the road.

On leaving the Forest Service campgrounds along the Metolius River near Sisters on my way to the Wallowa Mountains, I found a new backcountry road to explore (though un-numbered on my map it was marked route 126) that turned south off route 26 just east of Prineville. It headed in the general direction I wanted to go and passed through places on the map labeled Post and Paulina, and into the Malheur National Forest.

The next twenty-four miles wound through horse and cattle country until reaching Post, which looked to contain nothing more than a country store. Diane Jacobson greeted Lynn and I with a friendly, warm smile, and informed us, "Post is the geographical center of Oregon, and the population is two, myself and my husband Kent. We run the general store, post office, gas station, bar, and antique store." These businesses all occupied the same building.

The major attraction around here is rockhounding for agates, petrified wood, and limecast, an opalized petrified wood. Diane and Kent grew up in Prinevile and worked in the sawmill until one day they looked at each other and decided there had to be a better way to live. So they bought this place and moved out here.

"Are we getting rich? Well, let me put it this way," Diane says. We're paying the bills. About 200 people live in the area and this is where they come to visit, buy supplies, or have a beer. We have more land than people. We moved out here for quality not quantity."

The town was named after the Post Office that opened in 1854.

The store’s walls are hung with dozens of elk and deer heads, antiques, and relics.

"Here's our agate bar," says Diane, escorting us into the bar, which is covered with slabs of agate preserved in resin. "The guy who made this in the 50's still comes in and has a Coors light with me. He collected the rocks, sliced them and mounted them in resin."

The Crooked River flows just behind the store and they planted flowers all around their grassy plot and make it available for picnicking and a very attractive campground. Diane welcomes all RVers to come and stay in their back yard any time. With a wave and a "come back soon" we left Diane and headed on to Paulina.

The small Community Church’s picturesque steeple tops a white clapboard structure and looks like a stage set from a western movie. Two matching outhouses hid discretely behind the church. You don’t see too many churches these days with outdoor plumbing. Various other old buildings give the town an old western flavor.

The decrepit Paulina general store does not wear as friendly a face as the Post store. The woman running it grunted and looked down at my hello. A pool table dominated the front, and she was using it to cut out a pattern for a child's shorts and top outfit. The shelves were dusty and the goods old and faded. A deli case held one forlorn sandwich. The store had mostly thrift shop goods--a yellow ceramic frog with an open mouth for flowers, salt and pepper trays, crocheted doilies, ceramic candy bowls. If you need snacks or supplies along this road, choose Post.

The terrain here is sparse juniper, mostly sage and grasses. Low-lying spots of vivid green hint that water is near the surface, although not visible. At little further on a coyote dashed across the road just a short distance ahead of us, following a bird. Nearby young hawk parents gave their new family of two chicks soaring lessons. One youngster flew into a tree for a rest and the parent chased it back out.

At mile marker 100 pines and larger trees start to appear, leading to Malheur National Forest. It was about time to find a place to spend the night, so we turned in Forest Service Road 31 between mile markers 106 and 107 and found a great campsite by a creek away from the road with a couple of forest roads to hike. We saw no one until we returned to the highway the next day.

Route 126 ends at 395 fifteen miles south of route 26 at John Day. It’s amazing the number of places around here named after John, especially considering that he never visited this area. The moment of fame for this fur trapper occurred when Indians ambushed him on the Columbia River near the mouth of what was then called the Mau Hau River. The river thereafter was called the John Day River.

At Austin Junction, route seven turns northeast from 26 toward Baker City. About halfway there, turn left for a short detour to historic Sumpter. Along the river piles of river rock and debris attest to the area’s bustling gold dredging past between 1935 and 1954. The Sumpter Valley gold dredge, a huge decaying era remnant at the end of town, took 23 men to operate working 24 hours a day except for the 4th of July and Christmas.

At a cost of $300,000 it produced 45 million dollars in gold. It made a terrible racket as the iron buckets could not be oiled for fear gold would slip through. Complaints of the noise fell on deaf ears as the owners justified the 24-hour noise by the amount of gold the dredge brought in.

Return to Highway 7 and the road follows the wildflower flanked Powder River, part of the 52-mile Elkhorn Scenic Byway, ending at Baker City, an old town with dozens of places on the historic register. This area was part of the Oregon Trail and various museums and historic markers describe events along the trail. In the distance you can see the peaks of the Wallowa mountain range.

Just outside Baker City the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center on 3684-foot Flagstaff Hill re-creates the intense, emotional saga of the 2000-mile Oregon Trail with vivid and often painful reality. The trail followed sections blazed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804-1806 and by the wandering trappers, missionaries, soldiers, and mountain men. The center looks out over the valley and an original section of the trail, complete with authentic wagon ruts that the 300,000 hopeful settlers rode, walked, and died along in search of the good life in the territory called Oregon.

Detailed and convincing dioramas depict what life was like on the trail: battered Conestoga wagons, with ripped canvas tops and mud splattered wooden wheels, children with dirty faces in tattered dresses, ragged pants, and worn out shoes.

Outside the visitor center, a group of dusty canvas-topped wagons circle a fire pit where three young women cook doughy lumps in heavy black cast iron pots hung from sticks over an open fire. Their long dresses drag in the dust. Various sizes and shapes of cooking implements have been spread out on a cloth near the fire, and children’s games and toys occupy a nearby table.

"Fry bread’s ready," announced one of the women. "Anyone want to try some?" The women served the steaming bread with a dollop of jam to a group of eager onlookers and explained the various tools and methods of cooking that the settlers would have used while making the long, hard trek across the Oregon Trail.

Bob Difley

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John Day Fossil Beds

By Bob Difley

Forty-five miles east of Prineville, Oregon, the pastures and forests of the Ochoco National Forest disappear where the road cuts through a canyon three miles west of the hamlet of Mitchell (pop. 160). A sign points to a left turn to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Painted Hills Unit. A well-maintained six-mile long gravel road leads to the eroded yellow and rust banded hills, which stand out in bleak contrast to the surrounding green pastures, and flowing rivers.

Painted Cove Trail offers a representative overview of this barren otherworldly looking landscape, displaying colors from beige to lavender to red caused by depositions of ash from a series of volcanic eruptions 30 million years ago. The clay soil, formed by the settling and compacting of the ash, absorbs moisture, changing its consistency and color, and is so fragile that footprints leave great depressions in its surface encouraging damaging erosion. Not much grows here.

Other trails climb to overlooks and the three-mile long High Desert Trail Loop wanders through the badlands and a wildlife preserve, but don’t expect to see the saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, and three toed horses that roamed what was once coastal prairie and tropical marsh land. They disappeared during the volcanic era. The cataclysmic and far-reaching lava flows and ash clouds hundreds of feet thick buried the marsh and all that lived there.

The fossil discoveries of over 100 different mammal species have given scientists a detailed look into our prehistoric past. Many of the fossil findings can be viewed at the visitor’s center at Sheep Rock Unit, ten miles west of Dayville.

For information contact: John Day Fossil Beds NM, 420 W. Main St., John Day, OR or call (503) 575-0721.