Road trip - Day 2

Day 2 – June 26 – John Day, OR to Wells, NV

One of the reasons we chose to stay at the Little Pine Inn was that they offered a free breakfast at The Outpost down the road. I wasn’t sure how good of a breakfast to expect, and was pleasantly surprised at eggs, bacon, and coffee (pancakes, or hashbrowns were other options). We filled up on food, fueled up the car, and hit the road.

After having driven through desert-like terrain, it was fun to drive through evergreen forests once again. At about 10:30, as we passed through Wallowa-Whitman national forest, we took an outhouse break, and I fired up the laptop so Krys could watch a DVD in the back seat. The outhouses in the campground were surprisingly nice looking woody bits. Onward.

A half hour later, we entered Malheur County, which is the only county in Oregon that is on mountain time. We continued on and entered Idaho just after noon, and stopped at the Snake River rest area. I spoke briefly with the woman manning the information center, asking her about road conditions between there and Wells. “You picked a really nice day. You should have no problems,” she said. It was nice, sunny, and we were making good time.

We stopped in Boise, had lunch at Jack In The Box, and we hit our first traffic jam, due to a car fire that started a brush fire, near Mountain Home. Shortly after, we hit a thunderstorm, with lightning bolts tagging the ground in the distance. Very cool.

At Twin Falls, we left Interstate 84 and headed south on US-93. Amazingly, a flock of pelicans flew overhead as we approached the Snake River gorge. We stopped for a brief snack, and took US-93 into Nevada. From the turnoff of I-84, Jackpot, Nevada is 43 miles south. Beyond Jackpot is miles and miles of nothing. Nevada is on pacific time, but Jackpot, by municipal statute, is on mountain time, probably because nearly all the clientele of Jackpot are people coming down from Idaho.

We had planned on camping at Angel Creek Campground just outside of Wells, but the threatening skies implied rain, so we searched for an inexpensive motel. We certainly could have done better, but we ended up at the Shell Crest Motel. For $26.00, we got two beds, a dirty shower, and a dead mouse in the gravel parking lot near the car. It reminded me a lot of the cheap motels in the Ponders area of Lakewood, but nobody was actually living there.

Miles today: 440
Miles total: 848