RV Adventure, Day Two: Where All the Men Are Cowboys

Friday, June 27, 2008. Ochoco N.F. to Cascade, Idaho, Arrowhead RV Park.
327 miles, 8 hours.

Expenses:

Fuel $102.00
Campground $28.00

Western Oregon is high desert country. The radio, where there is reception, is all country music and Rush Limbaugh. Now, Rush and I live in completely different political galaxies, but you’ve got to give the guy credit—he almost got me believing that there is actually more ice in the Arctic this year than ever before!

American flags fly everywhere. One town is all gussied up for the 4th, and they must have voted in a tax increase just to cover the hundreds of red, white, and blues shading the entire three blocks of Main Street.

This is a land of unusual churches—Church of the Nazarene, Church of the Holy Redeemer. You don’t see many Lutherans or Presbyterians out here, not to mention Unitarians or Quakers.

Rising out of the high desert east of Redmond are forested ranges with cool breezes and chilly nights—the Malheur and Wallowa National Forests. I make a mental note to remember Dixie Campground in Malheur N.F., and two or three others on the east
side of the summit. The brown and khaki tones of the high desert below are interrupted only by the deep blue-green waters of a reservoir, miles long, which doesn’t even rate a name on the map. It is nearly deserted, even in this ninety-degree weather.

Much of Eastern Oregon is populated with far more cattle, magpies, rabbits, ravens, vultures, deer and elk than with humans. This scrubby desert somehow feeds them all.

I take Idaho 55 north from Horseshoe Bend, the highway curling upwards beside the Payette River canyon, the trees getting taller with every mile. It is still hot, though, even as we approach 4,000’, and the long line of vehicles I’m in, like one boxcar in a train, reminds me that it is Friday, and I’d better settle in early.

It seems like it takes a long time to drive the 53 miles to Cascade, where I decide to camp at a large RV park. An employee, driving a golf cart, models the park’s 5 MPH requirement as she escorts me to my campsite. The site is sandwiched in between two big rigs, one with a pop-out I can barely squeeze past when I go out to attach my hook-ups. I’m careful which way I bend over, so as not to frame my butt in their big picture window, from which they can probably read the labels on the cans in my cupboards. My sixteen-foot Nash looks like a dollar hamburger lost inside a big bun.

There are many 5th wheels parked here, trailers that hitch into the back of pick-up trucks. These trucks are loaded with custom features, like red and yellow flames, and lightning bolts, which make them resemble the drawings pre-teen boys make while ignoring a teacher in middle school. The owners of these pick-ups, however, haven’t seen middle school in quite a few decades!

At Arrowhead RV Park, I realize that I am safer than I was in my mother’s arms. All around me are men, 75+, of the Hunting and Gathering Culture, who only speak to each other and rarely to women they are not married to, men of diminished testosterone who still take their roles as protectors of women quite seriously. These men are happy, even anxious, to offer advice on any question of trailer maintenance. They are delighted to second-guess the guy who actually worked on my trailer, the guy I trusted completely before hearing what these guys have to say.

Even though I rarely spend this much to camp, preferring National Forest campgrounds, when I think about getting water, electric, and sewer hook-ups, a shower, wireless Internet and technical advice, all for only $28.00, I realize I have gotten a real bargain!

Lee Lawton is a Renaissance woman, Jill of all trades, writer and poet.