The Long Road Home

• 78ers's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Missoula

Trip Start Sep 15, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End Oct 2007

  Missoula, Montana, United States
Thursday, November 8, 2007

  Well, we made it back to Missoula.  It feels kinda weird to be back and to be staying in one place, but I think we're starting to get used to it.  By the time we finished our last entry in Bend and got on the road, it was already about 4:00pm.  We decided to just drive as far as we could before it got dark and ended up turning off on a Forest Service road and finding a nice, FREE! campsite.  We had downloaded Survivor while we were doing our travelogue entry earlier so we sat on the 'couch' and watched it.  It was really fun, it felt like date night or something.  Silas seemed to think it was funny that I thought it was so exciting since we had been watching it every week, but it was the first time we ever watched anything on the 'couch'.  We ended up watching several episodes of Wonder Years too before we finally went to bed.
  The next day we pretty much just drove.  We did make a stop at the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center which is part of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.  It was pretty cool, they had tons of fossils that were found in the area...not dinosouar, but prehistoric mammal fossils.  I don't remember what any of the animals were called though- I don't think I could pronounce any of them, but I did learn that there used to be crocodiles in eastern Oregon- who would have thought? 
  In the afternoon we stopped at a cafe/bar in Unity, OR and had the meanest, greasiest, burgers I've ever seen.  I had a mushroom swiss burger which was big, but Silas went for the DOUBLE bacon cheeseburger.  It was huge.  Silas said it probably took a year off his life.  If not the burger itself, I think the huge pile of tater-tots and french fries might have done it.  But I'm not complaining, it was one of the tastiest burgers I've ever had.
  After that we drove until it got dark and ended up making it just into Idaho.  One thing that I have to add here is that my watch battery had died just a few days before and the only other thing that we had to tell time by were our cell phones- which weren't getting signals half the time anyway.  Right after our lunch in Unity we had crossed into Mountain time, but this was the Saturday before daylight savings.  So when we woke up on Sunday morning, not only did we have no idea what time it was, but I couldn't even figure out how many hours difference it should be from the day before.  (I have it figured out now- it was exactly the same since we had lost and hour then gained one)  But then, because of the way we were driving, we went back into Pacific time for the rest of the day, then back into Mountain time the next morning.  It was all very confusing to me.  I always have a hard time figuring out daylight savings, but this time there we were crossing back and forth into different time zones, and I didn't even know what time it was anyway!  I tried to just not think about it since it didn't really matter anyway, but knowing that I had no way of knowing what time it was really made me want to know!!  I'm still not over that- I feel like I have to double check on another clock every time I look to see what time it is. 
  But back to our night in Idaho... We saw a motel that with an RV park and decided to stop and see what their rates were.  They said that the RV park with full hookups was $20 and without was $10.  We thought that seemed really cheap so we decided to stay there and were directed to the back of the motel.  Well, the RV park turned out to be little more than a parking lot, but for $10 we weren't complaining.  We also found out that they had free showers, so that was an unexpected bonus.
  On Sunday morning we decided that we were going to go Jerry Johnson hot springs which is just on the Idaho side of the ID/MT border.  We had been talking about it the day before and realized that we had been there exactly a year ago when Silas had visited me right before he went to Telluride.  When we got to the parking area there were a few cars and we decided to wait a little while to hike in to see if anyone might leave so we could have it to ourselves.  One group of people left, and we ended up meeting another on the trail and when we got to the hot springs we were the only ones there.  
  It was such a nice end to our trip- it made it seem complete.  Kind of like we had come full circle- not just on the trip, but together.  It made me really happy to think about how a year ago that day when we were at the hot springs I could remember exactly how I felt- I liked Silas so much, but had no idea how he felt about me, and now a year later we were together.  We were both sad that the trip was coming to an end, but for me, thinking about how much had changed in the past year made me really happy.  It was the perfect end to the trip.
Allison

Well, after 4807 road miles, 69 hiking miles, 80 river miles, and 5 gallons of leaked oil on the highways and roads of seven states we have returned to Missoula, where it all began. I cannot believe the bus made it the whole way without breaking down! It is kinda sad that the adventure is over, but it is also a relief to be indoors with winter weather and temperatures setting in. Waking up to ice inside the van became the norm for the last week of our travels. I was surprised how nice the drive through central Oregon from Bend was. I was not expecting forests and canyons, but rather boring yellow plains like Eastern Washington. It was a nice road and the small towns along the way were like little time capsules. Our visit to John Day fossil beds was really interesting. It is was cool to see how different the flora, fauna, and landscape of Oregon was at different points in time. It was a reminder of how short modern man has been in the picture. And finally, like Allison said, it was really nice to return to Jerry Johnson hot springs a year later. It felt like the road trip and the last year of our lives together and apart had come full circle. Now it's time to start the next chapter and a new adventure.
Silas

Print this entry Share Missoula hotels

Previous Entry