First Day on the Road

      We are on the road again. On our way to Baker City, OR  from Redmond, OR we were coming up to Dixi Pass and saw this on the hill ahead.

We turned in to investigate and found it to be an oversized replica of an Oregon Trail covered wagon.

This is the first place that people following the Oregon Trail would have looked out over the fertile John Day Valley and seen the green of the John Day River winding through it. As we traveled further east we found the country they would have passed through was rough broken volcanic rock with sparse grass for livestock, much like the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains. I'm sure the valley, the river, and Strawberry Mountain beyond it was a welcome sight to those long ago pioneers. 

I climbed up into the large wagon to see what the view would be like out from under the cover looking West toward the valley from the summit of the pass. No wonder some of the people stopped here rather than go on to the Willamette Valley.