Road Trip - Summer 2015: Farewell Bend

Our family just returned from an 11-day road/camping trip to Yellowstone National Park. There is too much to share in just one blog post, I think, so I'm going to break it up a little bit. This first part is called Farewell Bend.

A couple of years ago, Ben had a memorable camping trip here with two friends. They were hunting for rattlesnakes and got horribly sunburned. (His friend has scars from the sunburn he received.) Sounds like a fun place to take the family, eh? It was the first place we stayed on our trip.

Farewell Bend State Recreation Area sits on a widened section of the Snake River just outside of Huntington, Oregon, near the Idaho border. A few feet outside of camp is a sign ushering you from Pacific Time to Mountain Time (or vice versa if you're coming from the other direction). Beyond the campground, there is nothing but yellow, dead grass and barren hills for as far as the eye can see.

We had been having a very uncharacteristic heat wave in the Portland-Metro when we left, so arriving to 103 degree weather wasn't necessarily a shock to our systems, but it wasn't comfortable either. And do you know why they call Huntington the Catfish Capital of Oregon? Heat + Water = Bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. As in, the bathroom sinks were black with living, dying, and dead gnats. The picnic table looked like it was moving. Even with insect repellent spray and a citronella candle, we still got bitten and I'm sure we swallowed bugs. It was pretty gross. None of us took pictures of the bugs, although I thought about it.

My Durango is a city slicker. It likes commuting 15 minutes to work. It likes carrying groceries. It likes occasional trips to Granny and Papa's house. It is not accustomed to hauling seven people with all their gear and a tent trailer over hills in extreme heat; it overheated about six times on the way to Huntington.

We had just had the air conditioning fixed before we left, which offered much relief. However, I think it works better in the front than in the back of the car.

We stopped in Arlington on the way to Huntington to stretch our legs and eat some sandwiches. The kids were unimpressed for the most part.

One hundred six was the hottest temperature we saw on the way to Huntington. We purposely took our time leaving Monday morning so as not to arrive in Huntington during the heat of the day. It worked out well; we arrived about 8:30 p.m.

The campsite at Farewell Bend had more trees than I expected it to have, considering its surroundings. And it had free showers, which we didn't fully appreciate until we stayed other places on our trip.

Ben with his magic blue cloth. It worked surprisingly well to cool him off in the heat and he got a lot of use out of it here! It was all but forgotten when we reached Yellowstone, where it never got above 75 degrees.

Shea and I were the first awake on Tuesday morning and we took a walk on the bank of the river.

A view from our walk.

Farewell, Farewell Bend!

None of us were in a hurry to return to this place. We were meant to stop here on the way home, but we opted to pass it by instead. If you ever need a place to stay in the desert known as eastern Oregon, Huntington is not a bad place. But if you have enough time and gas, there's no reason to stop.

All photos in this post were taken by me on my cell phone. 

Fitbit recorded my step count for Monday as 5,159 (my workday average is about 3,500).