Joseph, OR

13 September 2011
It was a beautiful, scenic 70 mile drive to Joseph on a winding road. We caravanned with several others. The leaders notified the rest about oncoming cars and bicyclists, etc.
We are at the Park on the River. We saw fresh water salmon spawning in the adjoining stream and we are surrounded by pine forest. The weather is perfect. We had a delicious shish kebob dinner at Vali's Alpine Restaurant a block from the park. They opened especially for us.

14 September 2011
After a leisurely morning at camp with huge cinnamon rolls from a local bakery, and doing some laundry, we went to the Enterprise, OR Rotary Club lunch meeting. The food was provided by local ranchers and businesses - wonderful! Our own Kirk was the speaker, telling us about his experiences with the Exson-Valdez investigation. We stopped at a Safeway market to prepare for the evening pot luck dinner. How much weight did we gain today? After the dinner a young park ranger spoke to us about the local ecology and history. She was very dynamic.

15 September 2011
It was raining off and on this morning, but we were happy it stopped before afternoon. We went into the town of Joseph to see beautiful bronze work, go through the historical museum, and to window shop interesting stores. We went into a hardware store for a clasp and longer rope leash for the dog and received friendly personal service.
In the evening the Reeds invited us to their beautiful home on Lake Wallowa for a wonderful ham dinner. This was followed by a fresh Oregon Marionberry cobbler to die for.

16 September 2011
Today we mostly hung around camp getting ready to move on tomorrow. We had a Mountain Berry Shake in the afternoon and bought some shirts. At 5:00 PM we carpooled to the Mt. Joseph Cattle Ranch. We toured the beautiful ranch log houses and grounds, and enjoyed a big camp fire. Then we sat down to a wonderful steak dinner. A local rancher gave us a presentation on the details of cattle ranching. This was most interesting and inspiring. It is amazing how much work it takes to get a steak to our plates!
It got quite cold so we were ready for bed when we got back to camp.