Taking the backroad:

One of our goals as we travel is to get off the main drag, avoid the standardized restaurants and markets that are the mainstay of the highway traveler, and to find the towns and scenery bypassed by the freeways of the last century’s transportation explosion. Often, our choices lead us into bits of the past, towns that have evaded the clutter of cookie cutter development and retain the charm and quaint evocation of the past. Often also, we generate collateral excitement by our choices. One town along the Mississippi we visited was packed with Victorian homes and churches. It was also home to a police officer who, seeing our out of state license plates I presume, grew suspicious and followed us throughout our rambling around his village, only leaving our trail once we crossed the city limits.

 

Yesterday was another trip into the backroads of America. We had decided to avoid the usual highway route from Redmond to Boise, so chose a cutover from our campsite to catch Hwy 26 going through John Day. Lydia had not driven Atticus III yet, so wanted to practice on a less busy segment of our trip. She got her wish. Roughly two miles from our camp, the pavement ended.  The next eight miles consisted of loose gravel and washerboard dirt. (For those not initiated into the jargon of the rural west, a washerboard road is exactly like the surface of the old corrugated, metal boards used to scrub the bejesus out of dirty clothes. They are occasionally used as rhythm instruments in country bands.) The modern motorhome is not meant for such surface conditions. The shocks are meant for good asphalt and nothing less. The inside of a motorhome is filled with cupboards, which in turn, are filled with dishes, and boxes and cans of food. None of these are secured, though past experience has taught use to tie the doors shut.

 

You cannot speed through washerboards. The faster you travel, the worse the vibration and so, you go five or six miles an hour down the center of the gravel where the bumps are the least. At each hill, you pray not to encounter some “country boy” in his beater truck cresting the hill at 60 miles an hour. Like a root canal, it is something that must be savored, not hurried through. All things must come to an end however and so roughly an hour later, we completed our short cut and joined the highway.

Lydia drove the next two hours and I took over somewhere around John Day. We wound through forests of ponderosa pines and valleys with streams and wetlands, climbing in altitude the whole way. That is until we got to El Dorado Pass where we began our descent. This is always a tricky process. Big, flat sided Atticus tends to lean into curves and creeps up to 80 miles an hour without hesitation. I pride myself on handling this rather well, but one curve caught me unawares and I took the curve at more speed than I should have.

On the bench seat behind the driver’s seat was a plastic 3 drawer chest.  It held kitchen goods that wouldn’t fit in the cupboards like a toaster and a coffee grinder. I say held because when I sat it on the seat, I placed it so the drawers faced out rather than against the seat. Given the speed I was traveling, the angle of the curve, and the nature of centrifugal force, the drawers flew out and dumped their contents around Annie, who was sleeping between our seats. I was surprised. Lydia was not happy. Annie thought we were trying to kill her, until she found the rolls of Lifesavers which had been ejected from one of the drawers. Who knew? Dogs like Lifesavers and can shred a roll of paper wrappings in seconds to get to them. I was surprised. Lydia was still not happy.

I wish I could say that this was a unique experience, but it was not. The backroads we travel offer different perspectives from those of the highway. We have adventures; we have fun. We learn new things about the world and about ourselves. We take pictures. We make memories.

 

Safe travels.

 

 

The Road