June 29 - Friday Pendleton OR to Nampa ID - 319 miles

Beautiful western sunny morning. The light in the morning here is always white unlike home (which is more colorful, aka better), but the air was crisp, 55 degrees or so, so I took a walk to stretch out a bit before packing up. It was still pretty early but I wanted to get moving. The plan was to head southwest and end up somewhere near Boise Idaho so I could setup to hit the backside of the rockies.

A guy and his wife saw the plate and we chatted in the parking lot a half hour or so. He grew up north of here, maybe 50, and moved to California but was back visiting family in Oregon. We got on to the crops and we both agreed that the small farms were gone. It's all big ag now. It is more efficient, scientific, etc, but how can you buy that efficiently produced food without a job. I still see healthy small towns amidst the dead towns so someone if figuring it out.
So off I went, and of course 10 miles down the lonely road i realized I only had a qurter tank (didn't I do that yesterday?) so back into Pendleton to fill up. As it turned out, I would have been fine, but no chances out here.
I started out with the big wheat fields like yesterday afternoon, but as the irrigation petered out, it was just grass land, more and more rolling with a few trees here and there. Out here I always wonder if this is what it looked like when the Oregon Train folks came across in the 1840's and 50's. Lots of Oregon Trail markers today.

The road was wonderful, twisting down through sloughs and then over passes which were National Forests by the looks. Almost no trafic so I had my own personal roller coaster to ride. Lots of what looked like doves flying in and out of the road (nesting season) which added to the effect.
Every noe and then you see a lone tumbledown house way out in a field or on a rise an wonder if someone had tried (maybe succeeded for a bit) to live out here by themselves. You could also see signs "the old road" that was a very narrow crooked road. It was paved so maybe 40's, 50's, ??
I saw a lot of BMW's today, mostly GS's on this kinda lonely road and the ever present Harley's. When I pulled into the town of John Day, named after an explorer from 1812. A big banner in town mentioned a BMW rally, hence all the BMW's. I was a little chilled from a full morning of rolling over the passes in the National Forests so I went all the way through the town looking for a place with maybe some bikes parked out front. I saw a pack of Harleys out front of the Squeeze-In Restaurant who were just leaving as I circled and turned around. Wicked friendly folks running it and I had a couple coffee refills to get my hands warmed up. Decent sized town, looks like maybe some logging still going on (tall pines in the forests still).
Back on the road and as the elevation dropped, the irrigation kicked in but this time there were all kinds of crops. The closer I got to Boise, the more ag there was. Pass a sugar mill that processed sugar beets and later saw a lot of those being grown. Lots of wheat and I recognized the alfalfa (hay) smell right away. The big signs saying they grew onions here and indeed I recognized vast fields of onion plant, still early.

Now none of these are small operations. They have irrigation ditches everywhere and construction equipment shaping the landscape to maximize acreage and water flow. Lots of pipe being laid from 5 ft diameter down. This is big ag. Wait until they computerize the tractors and harvesters.
Motels were tough, I assume because of July 4 (Weds). Nobody is really sure which weekend is the July 4 weekend.
Called ahead for a motel to be safe and arrives a couple hours later. Found my chain lube tonight!!!
Odometer reads 25,172 tonight.