Anyway, so I’m drifting back down to eastern Oregon and Burns on this trip. I plan on stopping in John Day and maybe check out the town a bit more. Or not. We’ll see how I feel when I get there. Along the way I kept running into burned areas. The result of all those wildfires from last year and the years before. This is US 395 and it heads due south. I’d imagine it’s a difficult road to drive in the winter…especially in an RV.
Eventually, I made it to John Day, and stopped for the night. It was pretty much the same as last time so I only spent the night. Next morning it was off to Burns.
This trip, instead of staying right in Burns, I decided to pass through town on into Hines which is just a couple miles beyond. There’s a little RV park there in Hines that I wanted to check out. They don’t have much of an internet presence which often points to either poor facilities or poor Wifi or both. And sure enough, the site I was given was basically a driveway, and it turned out the only one that had both 50 amp and was close enough to the building to get email only Wifi. But at $22/night it was tolerable. The picture shows how I set up, but later I moved my car to the front of the RV so people could use the driveway. It’s actually an alleyway but I’m off far enough to the side that even service trucks could get by. I did have to retract my awning one time though.
Not the greatest park in the west but I was OK with it for a few days. One thing that was a big issue were the tumbleweed stickers. Walk outside for a few minutes and the bottoms of your shoes would be covered with them. I’d have to scrape them or pick them off of my soles before entering the house. After a week of living here my carpet required wearing foot covering of some kind just to avoid the inevitable stab in a bare foot. If you’ve never lived in the desert, you probably aren’t aware of how painful these stickers are if you step on one. When I was a kid, in the spring my brother and I would get our feet ready for summer and then fall by walking barefoot on the gravel road out front of our house. That way callus would form on the bottoms of our feet and come the end of spring, we could walk on anything. And later on in the season, only the longest of stickers would penetrate the callus.
I did enjoy my stay in town and soon found a pizza and brew pub where I could watch the Seahawks games on big screen TV. The pizza was standard, but the salad bar was premium. The beers were so so.
A few days after arriving in town, I’d arranged for my VA clinic appointment, and drove a few miles to the outskirts of Hines for my yearly RV oil change appointment at the Truck Shop. I like the people at this shop and so far the work has been great. But, from now on I’ll be bringing my own synthetic oil because even though I’d asked for synthetic several times, they only had a blend on hand when I arrived for my appointment. Because apparently, the Napa in Burns refuses to, or isn’t savvy enough to stock it. Pissed me off but, not much I could do about it. Next time I’ll bring my own.
On the way into Burns I’d pass an automotive paint shop that had a bunch of antique cars in the showroom, so I stopped by one day for some pictures.
They also had a bunch of miniatures. Pretty neat little self tour. It’s a working paint shop so they just escorted me into the showroom and went about their business. Kinda cool.
So that’s all for today. One of my readers asked that the galleries be expandable but I’ve not found how to make them that way yet. Still working on it.
Thanks for reading!
395… isn’t that the one where the Malheur Refuge antagonists finally came to their end? It looks much like OR 245 between Unity and Sumpter or Baker; a nice drive with little traffic, and insight into fire damage. With much more snowpack, hopefully this year will be one with fewer catastrophic fires in my beloved native State.
Well, no, but close. After arriving in Burns using 395, you take 205 south to the Narrows. There you’ll see a turn off to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Visitors Center. That’s where all that happened. They damaged much in and around the facilities and the weirdos who did it got off Scott free. We the taxpayers got to pay for the repairs. They are and were criminals.
When E. Oregon was having all those wildfires I was way south but the nightly news told the stories and the satellite pictures showed the smoke from huge areas. It was interesting to pass through there now and find some areas where the fires had missed. One thing I did notice is that the firefighting crews saved a lot of properties because I’d see a house or two surrounded by nice trees and such but on either side and on a hillside above the houses, devastation from fire.