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Published: August 8th 2010
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Copperfield Campground
Manicured campground run by Idaho Electric Power, Oxbow Dam, Hell's Canyon. August 4-5:
If you travelled with us in cyberspace last year, you'll know that we got to the outpouring of the Snake River at the north end of Hell's Canyon at the beginning of our trip, but didn't dare spend the money to take the boat trip up it. It's said to be the deepest canyon in the USA!
This time we approached it from the south, which, just to gently befuddle you, is actually the upper reaches of it.
We had spent the previous night at the Clyde Holliday Campground, a manicured and
well-kept state park just west of the town of John Day. It continued the trend of lush grass, quiet, tree-lined, rather suburban-feeling, campgrounds where people operated in hushed tones and only the mosquitoes exhibited bad behavior.
For the first, but not the last, time we encountered the arrangement of unisex showers where several large single locking shower rooms were available to the campers. A most agreeable and sensible arrangement. So families with small children or couples or friends could cluster in and shower together, as they pleased.
As we headed east along Highway 26, with all the sights of healthy looking cattle and
Refreshed and ready for the new day
Wondering what the canyon road will be like--it turned out to be windy but very easy. beautiful horses, and then timbered hills, I was struck by the multi-layered experience one has while travelling these days. Phil had connected the iPod shuffle to the auxilliary input of the van's radio. Ref: The iPod was introduced to us by our son Lucien who a few years earlier had put little paper tags reading ipod all over the house and walls and everywhere he could think of, including inside my underwear drawers, under the hood of the car, in with the cutlery, so we would know he wanted one. I remember our Korean tenant coming to breakfast the next day, having read these signs all down our hallway, and asking me in a totally mystified tone, “What is i-p-o-d?”)
Anyway as we drove through eastern Oregon, the surrounding landscape was overlaid with an aural icing of Don MacLean, the Beatles, even Edith Piaf (ok, so we're human fossils ourselves!), call it cognitive dissonance perhaps, till you get to Josh Ritter singing Idaho.
And at yet another level I was still mulling over D'Almasy (the Hungarian) known as “The English Patient”, and Hana the Canadian nurse, and Carravegio the thief, and Kip, the Sikh sapper in the British
Looking downstream
Heading north into the steeper canyon walls Army, who disempowered bombs, all holed up in the Italian villa in the final days of WWII...which I had been reading about at the campground before the light was entirely gone.
We operate on such a multi-level field—books, CDs, movies (yes we had just seen Creation in Sydney, and also Lou and The Last Station and The Waiting City, an Australian film—if you haven't seen it, be sure to, set in India, dear Maureen). So as we travelled along, or waited in lines for road maintenance crews to wave us forward, I found myself in the past and the further past and the further past, while still gazing at the present and also dwelling in the imagined future, a concept I learned from our first son Sky while he was taking Post-Modern Studies at UWS many years ago.
Anyway, we got to Baker City, got some food supplies there, and headed up and down and up again, on and on, till we got to the Oxbow Dam at Hell's Canyon and the Idaho Electric Power Plant campground called Copperfield. This was nice enough, and we were very tired, the flagon of wine Phil had bought in Baker City,
Phil and Martha
Questing forward for a new adventure and the crackers and cheese, were mightly used by me.
But the next day when we drove up the Idaho side of Hell's Canyon, it seemed to me that the Hell's Canyon Campground over there was a bit better, esp. because there was a boat ramp you could go out and sit on, despite not having a boat, whereas at Copperfield getting to the water was a trek across large pebbles, with no gratification at the end.
We had debated about whether to make the drive up the dead-end road along Hell's Canyon on the Idaho side, but once we started we were delighted we had done so. See the attached pictures. It was a well-paved, easy drive, mostly down by the river, with great scenery.
Along the way, Phil saw hundreds, nay thousands, of large fish surface-feeding in the shady eastern side of the river. We later found out they were carp and perhaps some catfish. Though considered food in Europe and Asia, carp are regarded as vermin here (and in Australia). Apparently there are recurring economic schemes locally of using them for catfood, but nothing has come of this. Anyone out there interested in a
Algae bloom?
The river took on a luminous green color here. get-rich-quick scheme?
This time we didn't get the boat into Hell's Canyon either. Not from money concerns as much as sheer fear. I guess we're just not ready for what Hell's has to offer those who enter.
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Sarah Thomas
non-member comment
Wow!
Martha, this looks wonderful! Years ago I floated down the Snake with some archeologists in rubber rafts for an article I was writing. The article never panned out, but the trip was fabulous. I was pretty nervous. I and 2 others got dumped over a class 5 rapids. We did what they told us to do and they pulled us back in boat pretty quickly. We learned about the petroglyphs along the walls and camped out under thousands of stars. I loved it! I'm loving reading about your trip. Thanks!