It was 2023, and we were brand-new empty nesters. We had both recently changed jobs, still in education, but it would be the first Labor Day Weekend in twenty years that we didn’t have to spend setting up a classroom, so we decided to make it worth it by finding some of Oregon’s hidden gems.
I had no idea where we were going, but my husband told me to trust him, so I did. At first, all I knew was that we were going to Winnemucca. Not Oregon.
Honestly, Winnemucca is one of our favorite places, and I really need to write about that sometime, but it wasn’t actually our destination. That would come the next day; all I had been told was to wear walking shoes, comfortable clothes, and bring a swimsuit.
We passed the time talking, connecting, and eating gas station corn dogs as we made our way through Eastern Oregon, skirting the Idaho border.
Along the way we saw a sign alerting us to a Lewis and Clark historical site ahead. We were both confused because Lewis and Clark hadn’t come this way, or at least that is what we thought.
Naturally, we had to investigate.
The Oregon Trail history we had no idea existed
That sign led us to the final resting place of Jean Baptiste “Pomp” Charbonneau. We knew of him, but we didn’t know his story after the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It was an unexpectedly interesting bit of history, and somehow that stop was exactly right; it became a preview of how we would travel over the next few years.
While we had kids in tow, our cross-country trips were more trek than wander. We had places to be and very little time to get there. Now we had no kids but more time, so we began to follow the signs.
This particular trip had begun with a different kind of sign.
A few weeks earlier, I had shown my husband one of those AI-generated videos that had just started making the rounds. It showed a drone-like view of a landscape with a voice-over describing the area. A classmate from Iowa had tagged me in the video on Facebook to see if I had ever visited Leslie Gulch. I hadn’t, and despite having family roots in Jordan Valley, neither had my husband.
This was the inspiration for our trip. The video planted the seed, and Leslie Gulch became the destination around which the trip was planned.
I hadn’t made a spreadsheet with hotels, restaurants, or a cost breakdown. I had a duffel bag in the back and snacks under my feet.
There were three places we wanted to see: Leslie Gulch, the Pete French Round Barn, and Crane Hot Springs. There was also a lot of road in between.
We drove through Leslie Gulch in my bikini blue Jeep Renegade, and at some point I broke all the rules about safe riding and hung out the top to get a better view of the dizzying heights and spires in shades of red and orange that looked like a sunset in the middle of the day.
Remember, these look way better in person
The AI video did not come close to doing it justice. Neither would my pictures. I tell my friends that if something looks good in one of my pictures, it looks even better in real life. My camera is the opposite of those mirrors in dressing rooms that always make a person look five pounds thinner.
We followed the road, dodging potholes and puddles until the road ended at the Owyhee Reservoir. We stopped at the boat ramp and wandered along the shore, then sat for a while eating more of our gas station snacks while looking over the water.
We had the lake to ourselves, and it was a beautiful late-summer day, but that wasn’t our final destination. We still had more places to see.
On the way back, we decided to take a detour to Rome. We honeymooned in Rome, although that one was in Italy. This one was in Malheur County, so we had to check it out.
We took the gravel road to the Pillars of Rome and learned the name was pretty accurate.
The hundred-foot-tall rock formations did resemble the ruins of the ancient city and brought back memories of our honeymoon more than 20 years earlier. It was easy to understand why early settlers used them as a landmark along the Oregon Trail.
They are an impressive landmark
We continued to the Pete French Round Barn Historical Site, where once again, we were the only people there.
We walked around the site and took the second selfie of our lives. It wasn’t good.
Our second ever selfie-it’s so bad that I can’t even fathom posting it
The architecture of the barn was incredible, and the history even more interesting. We learned that while Pete French may not have been the most scrupulous of early ranchers, he must have been a smart businessman. He owned 70,000 acres and 45,000 head of cattle, and used the round barn design popular in the Midwest to train wild horses under the cover of a roof.
It is round
With two destinations checked off, it was time to head to our final stop for the night.
Crane Hot Springs is “about the water,” as its website says. There is a developed hot springs pool, individual tubs for those staying in teepees and suites, camp showers, portapotties, but no restaurant on site. Visitors can use the shared camp kitchen to prepare their own food.
I don’t know it gets much better than a sunset from a hot springs
We had booked a cabin room with a picnic table and a portapotty outside, so we stopped at a grocery store on the way for granola bars, wine, and sandwiches-all the food groups.
The past few days had been rainy; this was the year that Burners were stranded in the Black Rock Desert, so the water at Crane was cooler than usual. That didn’t dampen our spirits. We spent the evening in the pool by the water spouts, relaxing after a long day’s drive.
Even though the camp and the pool were full, it never felt crowded. We had found our way to a quiet corner of Oregon, and for one night there was nowhere we needed to be.
Looking back, I now see that this trip was the beginning of our new way of traveling. We had spent years planning trips around extended family, schedules, and budget hotel reservations; this time it was just for us.
I like it.
We still travel with our now-young-adult kids, but this time in our lives has taught us to slow down and read the signs. Sometimes we take the detour just to see where it will take us, knowing that there are many memories still to make.
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