Caldwell to Kennewick


 We started in open prairie land, passing stock feedlots, crops (especially potatoes), and the ever-present sagebrush, eventually arriving at the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center on top of a hill a few miles out of Baker City, Oregon. Check it out at https://www.trailtenders.org.

It's a display telling the story of the 300,000 people who got into covered wagons and took the approx. 2,000 mile journey from Missouri to Oregon, taking about 6 months. 30,000 of them died on the way. Very few of the deaths were from encounters with Indians who, in fact helped the invaders, much to their own detriment. The new arrivals slaughtered the Indians' bison, took their land, and gave them deadly diseases reducing their population from about 1,000,000 to about 200,000.  This is recognised in the interpretive centre but it seemed to us to be a guiltily whispered aside. The main story is about the white folk.

There are a few artifacts in the centre but it mostly consists of life size displays using extensive taxidermy to display oxen pulling wagons and horses being ridden by men - we couldn't find a single instance where taxidermy had been used on the settlers!!  There were paintings, videos, quotes from diaries, modern photographs of places and photographs from the time. It was very informative and we spent 2 hours there.

The road from Baker City took us into mountains that more closely resembled New Zealand with rivers winding through gorges. What a contrast!


 We are now in Kennewick, Washington State and tomorrow we cross the border into Canada, staying in Surrey, British Columbia for three nights. Another seven couples join us there for our 37 day trip through British Columbia, Yukon Territory and Alaska and back again.

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