Day 1: Drive to Wallowa County: 0 + 2.0 miles

Sunday morning I woke up early to drive to Portland to pick up Karen and begin our drive to the Wallowa Mountains. From Karen’s house, the drive was mostly on I-84. The drive was mostly uneventful, though at one point I saw some bighorn sheep on the side of the highway. I tried to point them out to Karen but she missed them. I have since learned that they are around that area quite often and the government has plans to relocate them as they are deemed a hazard as they tend to distract drivers on the highway. We stopped in Pendleton for lunch and then went to replace one of Karen’s letterboxes. Being in Pendleton, we had to also make a stop at the Pendleton Mill Store. Karen bought her umpteenth blanket, I managed to resist. From there we headed up to Deadman Pass where we made a quick stop for a letterbox and then over to La Grande. There we stopped at Wal-mart so I could buy some rain pants as our insurance policy against bad weather.

From La Grande, we left the interstate to begin the journey up into the Wallowa valley. Along the way we stopped for one letterbox and at the Terminal Gravity Brewery for a quick beer. From there we headed further down the road to the Mountain View RV Park where we met up with Don and Gwen, some letterboxers from California. They seemed perplexed when we drove up. When we got out, they wanted to know why we showed up on Saturday when we had planned to meet them on Sunday. I thought they were trying to be funny but soon enough we realized that they had actually lost track of the days and really though we were early. But they managed to whip up a delicious dinner while Karen and I set up our tents. Kwene B, a local letterboxer joined us later and we all took a drive to Wallowa Lake to find some letterboxes in the dwindling light.