We have several friends that have moved to Boise/Meridian and one was getting married so we decided to road trip to Idaho. Summer had just started and my daughter is out of school so we decided to take 8 days and explore. Since we had 6 days prior to the wedding we took our time getting to Boise and I wanted to go through Oregon to get there.
Every year we spend two weeks in Oregon near Crater Lake. We've spent time in central Oregon and up the coast but never eastern Oregon. After completing this trip I kind of know why many don't flock there but it was beautiful nonetheless. Our trip took us from outside Sacramento to Klamath Falls on the first day, all freeway. Day two was traveling East from KFalls on highway 140 which was mostly Ag and tons of water compared to drought stricken CA. There were also a couple mountain passes and much construction.
So many rules around the work sites.
If I saw a detour on the map and it involved a dirt road I took it. Some were short, some were dead ends and in a couple cases they were very long (two 40 mile 'detours'). I didn't know eastern Oregon had this type of terrain.
A really cool alkali lake.
Past Burns it turned into high desert and started to get drier. At this point we had been driving quite a while with still hours to go. The kids were doing better than me.
We hit up a large wetland called Malheur Lake which is part of a National Wildlife Refuge. Lots of cool birds and other desert/wetland wildlife.
Trusty 4Runner getting the job done.
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