on the road again

I am off again at the crack of dawn (translation: before 8AM!) for another whirlwind road trip. Before I leave, though, I wanted to at least get some pictures up from the Crazy Ass Courthouse Tour.

(... and I must take a moment here to take a deep breath and be grateful -- I have a million things going on (laundry, packing, worrying that I've pissed off everyone (mercury's in retrograde or something), internet trouble all day) and then I had one too many computer issues and had to force shut it down, which meant I thought I would have to go and re-grab all the photos I'd picked (and lose a bunch of writing, etc.), but when I opened the program back up, they were all here! hooray!)



here's the general area of where I was two weeks ago. I regret not taking pictures as we were going up and over Mt. Hood and for not taking more pictures in the high desert. (Oregon has a lot of desert, believe it or not.)


Prineville! I whinged greatly about having to go to Prineville (it's the Crook County seat, and therefore home to the courthouse) -- last time I was there was miserable. It's best known for being home to a Tire Empire, and it feels that way. But look at this tree! I can't stay mad at you, Prineville. The courthouse was very pretty, as courthouses go.


there was a fountain and lots of pretty pink petals.


Canyon City is an old gold mining town south of John Day, and the Grant County seat. The area between John Day and Canyon City was known as the "fertile crescent" or the "gold croissant" or something like that back in prospector days. I suspect there were a lot of Deadwood-style shenanigans that went on. Anyway -- A LOT OF GOLD in this region. Right near this sign is where I saw a truck all kitted out with Ron Paul signs, including a driver with face paint who was doing a lot of "woooooo!!! Ron Paul!!!" with honking and whatnot. (keep in mind that this was right before the Oregon primary.) -- Matter of fact, I saw very few political signs -- mostly for judgeships and other local governance, although there was a LOT of visible Ron Paul support. (He ended up taking 15% of the Oregon vote, which doesn't surprise me at all.) I was pleased to see big honking huge Obama signs in tiny mountain towns (Lostine, Joseph, Wallowa Lake). The only sign to do with Hillary that I spied (outside of Portland) was painted on the side of a shed in Limbler. It said something along the lines of "No More Scandals/ No More Clintons" (which makes me wonder if they've been awake during the last 8 scandalous years, but I didn't feel strongly enough about it to go knock on the door and ask.)


This old church is in John Day. I think it's very fancy from this angle, and if you look at it just right it could almost be some manner of buddhist temple rather than an old fashioned frontier church.


The strawberry mountains! Aren't they pretty? They're part (the delicious part) of the Blue Mountain range. (if I were a frontier woman coming over in a covered wagon, the Blues are where I would say "you have got to be fucking kidding me." and sit down on the ground and cry for three days.) I seriously don't know how everyone didn't just give up in Missouri.


Inside a gold dredge in Sumpter. (I think this is what the inside of my head looks like sometimes. Blurry, rusted, etc.)


What collection of road trip photos is complete without some out the window shots? This is in Union County. (Union county is very beautiful! But again with the mountains!!)


This is in Enterprise, Oregon (as you head into the Wallowa mountains). Chief Joseph dreams of peace, and of pizza. I might have been hungry when I snapped this one.


Wallowa lake. So beautiful!! We saw this in the morning and by that night I was back home in my bed.

speaking of bed, I have to go there now so I can leap out of it in the morning to go driving around like a madwoman once more.