Baker City, Oregon

This is our final day in Baker City and so a good time to update this blog. Our stay at Copalis Beach was long and damp; the only really nice day was the last one and that was the day devoted to housework and laundry so we’d be fresh to hit the road to Baker City.

This photo of a gull more or less summarizes our week in Copalis Beach – a total lack of color. However, we did make a couple of trips in to Ocean Shores where they were having an arts and crafts sale billed as the largest in western Washington. It was a dandy, with many fine items for sale at reasonable prices. I was especially impressed with some of the beadwork. We purchased a small Christmas ornament decorated with rosemaling, a style of Norwegian decorative painting.

The trip from Copalis Beach to Troutdale was damp and overcast most of the way but as soon as we reached Troutdale, the skies cleared and our moods improved considerably. We only spent one night in Troutdale and then headed east on I-84 to Baker City, a somewhat longer trip than we usually make. It had been our intention to break it up with an over-night stop about midway but there weren’t any campsites available thanks to the 100th anniversary of the Pendleton Roundup. I-84, as you may know, runs through the Columbia River Gorge and it was here that we had our first glimpse of bighorn sheep in the wild. It’s known as the “I-84 herd” and attempts are being made to relocate them. As you might expect, they’re a hazard because some folks are dumb enough to slam on the brakes and stop to gawk at them – not a totally smart move on an Interstate with a lot of truck traffic and a 65 mph speed limit. If you want to read more about the herd, check out http://www.biggamehunt.net/news/oregon-relocates-bighorn-sheep

Baker City has been a very pleasant surprise. We weren’t at all sure what to expect when some friends suggested we stop here. There’s been a lot of work done to restore the downtown area. Handsome buildings from the 1880’s now feature interesting shops and restaurants. The Gieser Grand Hotel, built in 1889 and closed for thirty years, has been restored and is now open for business as an elegant “boutique hotel”.

Right outside Baker City is the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, operated by the Bureau of Land Management. The buildings are institutional looking from the outside but there are some fine dioramas and displays inside, all proudly shown off by very enthusiastic “interpreters” in period costume. It’s mind-boggling to think of the pioneers heading off into the great unknown with no AAA to call when their oxen broke down and no GPS to guide them across hill and dale. And we think we’ve got it tough because our GPS doesn’t know his left from his right!

It’s an easy drive along the Powder River to the “ghost town” of Sumpter in the foothills of the Elkhorn Mountains. The hills closest to Baker City are bare but as the elevation increases they are covered with pine trees. We took a self-guided tour of the Sumpter Valley Dredge, a mechanical monster which dredged for gold in the area until 1954, leaving behind miles and miles of tailings.

Apparently the website quoted in the last post failed to reveal the juicy saga of Francis Mawson Rattenbury, architect of the Victoria, BC Parliament Buildings. The story goes that he “borrowed” his uncle’s credentials as an architect in order to land the job of designing the Parliament Buildings, became very successful, got married to Florrie Nunn, met and fell in love with one Alma Parkenham, got divorced from Florrie and moved to England with Alma. Then Alma got involved with their gardener, the gardener got jealous of ol’ Francis and bonked him on the head with a croquet mallet. Francis died, the gardener drew a life sentence and Alma killed herself. Which only goes to prove that Victorian England wasn’t quite as Victorian as we’d like to believe.

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