Day 13: The Backwoods of Wallowa

Tuesday

Time to hit the road again and this time we planned to go with Roy and Anne up into the backwoods of the Wallawa Mountains to explore the Hell’s Canyon Overlook area. The weather is still good, though the air is now quite hazy with smoke from wild fires many miles away, however there are now reports that a wild fire is being dealt with near Joseph, which is on our route this week, we will keep an eye out for this.

The first section is the good road to Halfway, a small community nestled at the foot of the mountains. From there we took the mountainous road of Route 39. This road travels through some beautiful mountainous countryside, but is rather rough, even lacking a tarmac surface in places, and includes one of the longest, steepest climbs we have tackled with the trailer on the back of our chevy. However 33 miles from Halfway we found the forest campground that we wanted to stay at, with its primitive campsites and proximity to the Imaha River. We set up camp and in the evening sat around the campfire cooking marshmallows and creating smores, gazing up at the stars overhead. By the way these smores were somewhat adhoc, as we had no Graham Crackers and used savoury cheese crackers instead and picked the chocolate chips from Anne’s Trail Mix to use as the chocolate component, of course they still tasted excellent. With the warmer weather still with us it made a memorable evening for us all. We definitely felt right in the middle of the wild outback of America, 33 miles from the nearest town.