Introduction
I toured through northeast Oregon for the first time in 2006, but haven't seen it since then. This year my interest in northeast Oregon was rekindled when driving round trip through the region to get to my Riding the Snake bike tour.
The Route
The northern loop is my design. It crosses the Blue mountains twice and follows the Oregon Trail emigrant road. The northern spur follows the Walla Walla river. The southern spur is a separate day trip up the Grande Ronde river on day 1.
The southern double loop follows the 134 mile Grande Tour Scenic Bikeway in remote valleys between the Blue mountains and Wallowa mountains. The easternmost road climbs into the foothills of the Wallowa mountains.
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This non-interactive route map image shows terrain shading.
The Landscape
The semi-arid landscape varies from pine forested mountains to grassy desert hills to irrigated farm fields. Elevation varies from 1000 feet in Milton-Freewater to above 5000 feet in the nearby Blue mountains.
The route follows remote and little-known streams such as the Grande Ronde, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Powder rivers. They originate in the Blue mountains and flow into the Snake/Columbia river.
This route is in my home state but very far from home. The desert mountains landscape seems exotic to me. The 2006 tour was mostly on east-west routes. This tour is mostly on north-south routes that I have never pedaled or driven before.
Big Rodeo
I planned the tour for September to enjoy the warm, but not hot, final days of summer. By accident the tour coincides with the Pendleton Round-Up rodeo which is September 13-16. The Round-Up is one of the largest rodeos in the nation and is the only major rodeo that prominently features indigenous culture alongside rodeo cowboy culture (which originated in Spain and Mexico but is now thoroughly Americanized). I left Pendleton four days before the rodeo began, but the rodeo forced me to change some lodging plans and pay higher than expected lodging prices in Pendleton, Milton-Freewater, and La Grande. The upside was seeing the big Dress Up Parade just before leaving town.
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Small Towns
The route has many lonely country roads and wide open views, but towns are also an important aspect of this tour. The plan allows time to explore the three main towns in the region: Pendleton, La Grande, and Baker City. Also smaller towns such as Milton-Freewater, Elgin, and Union. I never thought of northeast Oregon as being a destination for historic towns but the towns have colorful frontier histories.
Oregon Trail
Besides towns, the other main historic item of interest is the Oregon Trail emigrant road. My route closely follows the Oregon Trail between La Grande and Pendleton.
The Oregon Trail became a heavily used emigrant wagon road beginning in 1843. The eastern half of the route was also shared with the Mormon Emigrant trail and the California trail because the Platte and Snake rivers offered the easiest route west for most emigrants. Other routes are more mountainous and/or have scarce water.
Years ago I considered doing a long bike tour following the Oregon Trail. I bought Don Weinell's book about the subject. I was still camping at the time. Ultimately I decided that a long tour on the Oregon Trail is not for me. The original wagon ruts are not very visible in most places, and most of the original trail is on private property. There are occasional roadside monuments about the trail, but that's not very exciting. Much of the terrain and landscape is boring and unchanging. And much of the route is impractical for me since I quit camping.
I have pedaled small segments of the Oregon Trail in Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon. In 2006 I pedaled to the amazing Oregon Trail Interpretive Center east of Baker City, Oregon. I have also pedaled much of a southern branch called the Applegate Trail. This tour traverses the most notoriously difficult section of the Oregon Trail-the Blue mountains. Some grades required emigrants to double-team the wagons, forcing them to climb the steepest grades twice.
Ancestral Home
This region was originally inhabited by the Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Cayuse indigenous tribes. Today the 3 tribes are combined into the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla. My route passes through their reservation east of Pendleton.
The Umatilla reservation is the tiny red area in the map below. The dark brown area is the ancestral land of the Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Cayuse tribes, sprawling north into Washington. Their ancestral home was the crossroads of the Columbia river basin-the only practical connection between the Columbia river and the upper Snake river because the Snake river isn't passable in Hell's Canyon. Indigenous people traveled and traded along this route for thousands of years before Oregon Trail emigrants upgraded the footpath to a wagon road in 1843. For the same reason, 20th century highway builders chose this route for Old US 30 and I-84. Northeast Oregon will forever be the "Hell's Canyon bypass".
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I wanted to spend one night at Wild Horse Casino on the Umatilla reservation, but that wasn't possible because the hotel was fully booked for 2 weeks to host the Indian tribes exhibiting at the rodeo.
Smoke is the Big Unknown
September is the last month of the dry season and is usually the worst month of the year for wildfire smoke. Western Oregon had many wildfires this summer. My house had a few days of terrible smoke. But northeast Oregon had no smoke this summer because the upwind state of Washington had few wildfires. I had no smoke during the tour.
NOT a real-time journal
I admire the many people who are able to create bike tour journals live on the road. I just don't have the energy for that at the end of the day. During the tour I take many photos and write a paper journal. The online journal is created after the tour, usually at a rate of 2-3 journal days per week. The process of creating the journal is kind of like re-living the tour. That helps me avoid post-tour blues.
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