LaGrande, Oregon

We spent the night in LaGrande, Oregon last night on our 1,200 mile trek to Rocky Mountain National Park. Our goal is to put in 300 miles per day for the first four days, and then we can slow down a little bit. LaGrande is a good day's drive from Portland, and we've stayed at this park before. It has an interesting history. The name of the park is Eagle's Hot Lake RV Park, and it is situated next to the Hot Lake Hotel, which is on the National Historic Registry of Places. Here's an image of how it looked in its heyday:

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the Hot Lake Hotel:

Hot Lake Hotel is a hotel originally built in 1864 in Hot Lake, Union County, Oregon, United States. The hotel became a popular vacation and resting spot due to its relaxing thermal waters. It was purchased by Dr. W. T. Phy in 1917 who developed state-of-the-art medical facilities including a hospital and surgery room with the most modern X-ray and radiation treatments of the time. It functioned dually as a resort and hospital until 1934, when a fire destroyed the majority of the original building, which contained nearly 300 rooms.

From then on, the remaining brick structure served as a nursing home, asylum, and restaurant before being abandoned and falling into disrepair in 1991. Prior owners included future governor Walter M. Pierce and former state senator Parish L. Willis who were major shareholders of the Hot Lake Sanatorium Company in the 1910s. In 2007, the property was re-purchased and restored, and as of 2010, functions as a bed and breakfast, museum, and spa.

Interesting, huh? Here's how it looked on our previous two visits here:

I can't recall what year it was last time we were here, but the windows were covered with plastic sheeting as if someone were going to fix the place up. And they have! It now functions as a Bed & Breakfast. I'm always happy when such an old and storied structure gets new life.

This is a nice park, far away from freeway noise. There is a train that rolls through with a fair amount of frequency, but it doesn't blow its horn, and it only rumbles the earth a little bit. This is noteworthy because it has been our observation that RV parks are almost always located right next to the freeway or the railroad tracks. In fact, there is a park in Stockton, California, that has railroad tracks on both sides. 

There isn't a lot to tell you since our day yesterday consisted of nothing more interesting than 300 miles of freeway driving on I-84. That isn't entirely accurate because I-84 takes one through the beautiful Columbia Gorge. After living in Portland since 1978, The Columbia Gorge has become ho-hum to these jaded travelers and so we just drove on through with nary a picture. 

When we reached Eastern Oregon, we realized that we were at the southern end of The Palouse. While the landscape wasn't as dramatically undulating as its northern reaches, it still had the characteristic colors.

If you're new to this blog, then you might enjoy reading about our travels in The Palouse from last spring. There are some better pictures of what I'm talking about there.

When we arrived and got parked, we lounged around like two limp rags for a while. When it was close to sunset, we walked around the place, and found it to be quite lovely. There are hot springs in the area (thus, Hot Lake). On previous visits, we've been here in the spring when the weather is cooler, and it gets dark earlier. It is possible to see steam rising from some of the hot springs. Yesterday, we walked along this little stream lined with reeds and filled with lilypads.

The park is adjacent to the Ladd Marsh Wildlife Refuge, which stretches on as far as the eye can see.

Pretty much any tree or post standing vertically had some sort of bird house mounted on it,

including this eagle's nest, now abandoned for the season.

Here are some other things we saw:

We always bring our shadow selves along. They don't take up much room, and they are light packers.

We thought this might be an elk hoof print. If I'd been thinking, I would have put my foot there for scale, but I'm estimating it was three inches from heel to toe (if one can say that elk have heels and toes).

Here is Hot Lake, and you can see the hotel off in the distance.

Mike climbed over the rocks to feel the water to see if it was hot (it wasn't). I kept the camera at the ready just in case something, you know, interesting happened in this process.

We thought this dump site would be useful only to those with the shyest of bladders and who were extremely anal retentive.

There was something sort of magical about these dandelions with the sun glinting off their "fur". (Cat people see fur wherever they look.)

And I love cat tails, especially the two traveling with us.

So that's all I have to tell you for today. In an hour or so, we'll continue on our way toward Colorado. I expect we'll get to eastern Idaho today, although there's a chance we could cross over into northern Utah. 

We congratulated ourselves last night (dare I say it?) because we didn't run into the back of anything, nothing broke, the awning stayed firmly attached to the trailer, there were no tire tread separations, our trailer jacks are functioning as expected, our bed was not infested with carpenter ants, and there were no escapees from the trailer when we pulled in and opened the door for the first time. (Yes, these are all things that have happened to us in our travels.) I'm knocking on wood now and crossing my fingers and toes that the rest of the trip will be as uneventful as yesterday...possibly with some better scenery.

More later.