850 Miles Roundtrip in 72 hours

We have traversed Oregon on trips back to Idaho several times, but never over Highway 26 through John Day. Most often, we’d go through the gorge (I-84), avoiding the direct cut through Bend (Highway 20) because of the dull straightaway between Brothers and Burns. In June 2018, on the way back from a weekend trip to Weiser, ID, we changed it up, and I’m honestly a bit disappointed we didn’t sooner.

My sister and I were both born in June, so for our birthdays, we met up at our parents travel trailer in Weiser, ID for a short weekend. I had Friday off, so my plan was to drive my car part way Thursday night, and finish the drive early Friday. Her flight didn’t get in until late Friday night, so it was going to be a short weekend together before I had to hit the road for home, but we are a very close family, and it would totally be worth it! 😉

Around 2:00 PM Thursday afternoon, Scott found out he didn’t have to work the next day. (Side note - After being laid off in January, he found a new electrical shop to work with.) As is somewhat common for the construction world (or at least the electrical side), it can be a last minute notification that you have a day off. Generally, I found this highly aggravating, but this time was perfect. Two of Scott’s best friends from high school are in Boise, so I could spend time with family, he could spend time with them, AND we could take our house with us.

As soon as I finished work, I started prepping the trailer to tow. In reality, the process was pretty quick, especially since I had minimal advanced notice and I was still figuring it all out. It took about 3 hours and by 6:00 PM, we set off on our first real trip. (Side note, we had attempted a “first trip” the weekend before, and made it 75% of the way to our destination when I realized I left the keys to the trailer back at the RV park in my car. 😳)

Our plan was to drive through Bend, stopping when we were tired, ideally at the rest stop in Brothers, OR (past Bend). We chose this route because we didn’t want to deal with Portland traffic and the skinny curvy lanes of the gorge on our maiden voyage. This time, the boring straightaway between Brothers and Burns was a good thing, even accounting for the winding canyon between Burns and Ontario. Around dusk, we were nearing Sisters, OR (before Bend) and decided to stop for the night at Indian Ford Campground ($12/night). This was our first lesson learned on this trip - it will take longer to get everywhere! We now always increase the Google Maps travel time estimate by 1/3 when towing.

Indian Ford was a nice little spot. It is close to the highway, so there can be a fair amount of road noise. We stayed in spot #1, a pull through that our 53’ overall towing length fit into with ease. Because we were only staying for the night, we didn’t bother with any leveling jacks or disconnecting from the truck. The bonus was we were level just by driving in. We both really enjoyed having our home set up and dinner cooking within 15 minutes of arrival.

The next morning, I stole a chance to check out the campground as Scott was slowly waking up. The campground has two loops with a bridge connecting the two, crossing Indian Ford Creek. Unfortunately, the bridge has been closed for safety reasons, making the back loop inaccessible. On the map, our space was #13, but with the closure of the back loop, it was renumbered to #1 on the site marker. There are a total of 13 spaces currently open. Indian Ford is located about 5.5 miles west of Sisters and, according to the Forest Service website, it is commonly used by people just like us, looking for a place to stay for the night, so it is uaually pretty easy to snag a spot. The one word of caution I would share - as you are rounding the corner on the back end of the loop, around sites 20 & 21 on the map, make sure you swing wide enough to avoid the trees. Scott caught this just in time and we were able to make the corrections to avoid a collision. Whew!

Preparations for getting back on the road should have been easy, we were already connected to the truck for goodness sake! Sigh… but they were not. As I shared in our last post (but something we wouldn’t learn until a few weeks after this trip), the living room slide was quite taxing for the slide motor to pull it back in. Couple that with the order in which we routinely pulled the slides in, the biggest was saved for last because once it was in you couldn’t move around in the trailer. This meant the batteries had been worked just enough by retracting the other two slides to be too weak to handle the living room.

So there we were, 7:30 on a Friday morning, in what felt like the middle of nowhere (it really wasn’t) and we couldn’t get our slides to pull in. Tensions were mounting. There was no way to move the trailer until the slide came in (not only would it have been really bad for the slide, we wouldn’t have fit out of the campground). Scott doesn’t find working through problems to be quite the thrill that I do. Rather, he likes things to work (which really isn’t that much to ask). I started googling, but I really didn’t know what I was looking for. We were so new to this whole RVing thing, I wasn’t confident I had the proper terminology for my searches. We tried making some adjustments to the cables (some appeared to be loose) but we didn’t have any success getting the slide to come in. I found two mobile RV techs in the area that were opening at 8:00 AM, so we sat down to wait. Or, really, I sat down. Scott paced around, and by chance, started the truck.

The first tech I spoke with wasn’t familiar with cable driven systems, so he referred me to the other name I had found. The second tech advised that I shouldn’t have made any adjustments to the cables as it could mess up the tension and ultimately break one of the cables, leaving the slide inoperable. While we were discussing things to try, the truck had been running long enough to give a little boost to the trailer batteries. Next thing we knew, the slide was all the way in and we were ready to hit the road, albeit almost 2 hours later than we had hoped.

Oh, and for full disclosure, I should mention I had another key incident. 🤦‍♀️ Prior to the slide issue, I had placed the trailer storage locker key in my purse for safe keeping and to ensure it made it into the truck with me. Over the stress of the slide issue, I completely forgot where I put the key, so I completed a somewhat frantic 15 minute search of the campsite and the trailer, retracing my steps as best I could before finding the key in my purse. Doh!

Thankfully, the rest of the trip over to Wieser, ID was uneventful. The only downer was it took ALL DAY to complete the drive. Yes folks! Nearly 24 hours into the 72 hours we would be away from Eugene, we were just arriving at our destination. We agreed that the drive home would need to start early on Sunday morning to ensure we had enough time to get home in daylight.

After setting up the trailer, Scott quickly got ready and headed over to Boise to meet up with his friends. Mom, Dad, and I went out for dinner before heading to Boise ourselves to pick my sister up from the airport. Despite her late arrival, we all caught our second wind and stayed up for a while, talking, after returning to the trailers. The next day we went for a short walk (we brought Boomer, and his little 6 inch legs can only go so far) and then spent the afternoon playing a board game from our childhood, while Dad prepped dinner.

On Sunday, we hit the road around 8:00 AM, with our route going through John Day, OR and past the Painted Hills. Living in Oregon for the past 8 years, I had never heard of the Painted Hills. Thank goodness for Pinterest, or I would have never known of yet another bucket list item just a few hours from home.

I am not a fan of sagebrush, and when you drive I-84 through north eastern Oregon… that’s what you see. I incorrectly assumed that the John Day wilderness area would be just a bunch of sagebrush. We even had friends at the RV park talk about how they went camping for their honeymoon to the John Day wilderness, but I assumed that it was not my cup-o-tea.

Oh

How

Wrong

I

Was!

We are very much looking forward to going back to spend time here!

Just past of the tiny town of Mitchell, you take a right (when headed west) on Bridge Creek Rd/ Burnt Ranch Rd and wind your way back into the valley. It doesn’t take long, before you get a sneak peak of what the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument has waiting for you. The Painted Hills are made up of layers of soils that give insight into the climate of a few megaannums (millions of years) past. The reds and oranges are indicative of a more temperate climate, the black comes from vegetation, and the purpleish-gray comes from mudstone, siltstone, shale.

We didn’t spend much time here because we still had a few hundred miles to go before we would be back in our RV space. Looking back at the pictures, I would love to visit it again and explore some of the trails, see the hills after a rainstorm (the hues are supposedly enhanced)​, and watch the colors change with the sunset. 

Our drive ended as a rainy one coming down the Santiam Pass, with me in the driver’s seat! It was only my second time towing (the first was on that straightaway between Brothers & Burns) and, obviously, we survived! I also got to practice trying to back us into our spot once we got home... but after about 45 minutes, Scott said we would try some other day. That day hasn’t come quite yet... ​🤨

The other major lesson learned over this trip - don’t go so far so fast! In order to give the fur-kids some downtime, we should try to have 3-5 days between traveling. And, we should try to limit their travel days to 5 hours in the car. ​This means, we should have spent a few days a little east of Bend on the way over, and then some time around John Day on the way back. But hey, how would we know what our limit is if we didn’t try it out first?! 😁