The Road Trip that Wasn't

      We bought a used popup camper and fixed it up (the make over will be my next post). I spent at least a month planning our itinerary and making reservations. On October 13th we took off on a road trip to the Oregon coast. It didn't quite turn out as planned.

     The first night of our trip we stayed at a motel. Mainly because it was a long driving day and we were just trying to get there.  The second night was to be our first camping night. We would be staying at a hot springs in Oregon.  We got there, found our spot and got everything ready to raise the camper. There was a pop and nothing happened, the camper wouldn't go up. We found the cable had busted. The people at the campground were helpful in trying to find someone who might be able to fix it. To make a long story short, after talking to several people, we were unable to get the camper fixed in a reasonable amount of time. So I had to call and cancel all our reservations and then figure out our best route home. We thought we should try and salvage a little of our trip.

     So we headed back on highway 26, with a short side trip to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument and the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center.

     From there we went on to spend the night in Baker City, Oregon at the Geiser Grand Hotel. We had stayed here once before and loved it. This time we stayed in the Cupola room on the third floor. To read more about the hotel see my post:A Bed Time Story. 

   

     The next day we continued on through Oregon and into Idaho, enjoying the fall colors along the way.

We made a stop at the Chief Joseph Memorial

      We continued on a two lane highway, sometimes steep and curvy.

We spent the night in a small town in Idaho. The next day we woke up to fog but  continued on, following the Lewis and Clark trail.

     There was plenty of beautiful scenery to enjoy even if the day was wet and overcast.

     My husband was sure I found every two lane highway between Oregon and our home in Wyoming. But we did finally reach an interstate in the big sky country of Montana.

     We stopped for the night at one of our favorite places, Chico Hot Springs. The hotel has been there since the early 1900's. It's a rustic and relaxing place to stay and they have a four star restaurant. You can find out more about this great place here: Chico Hot Springs.

     After a nice dinner and a relaxing soak in the hot springs pool, the next day we headed home.   I kept checking the weather on the Oregon coast and found that it rained pretty much the whole time we would have been there. So I do have that to console me. So our 16 day trip turned out to be 7. It wasn't the trip we planned but we tried to make a little bit of lemonade from our lemons.

P.S. Our camper is now fixed. We'll try again next year.

A thought to ponder: "One of the greatest blessings in the world is to be able                                   to be happy even when things in life are not going as                                       planned."

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