Sunday, May 27, 2012
Sunday morning dawned beautifully and we headed south toward Heppner for breakfast. Heppner was where we were originally going to stay, but the little hotel was booked up. We left Hermiston on highway 207, passed through Lexington, then on into Heppner where we had breakfast at the Willow Creek Diner & Bakery. After breakfast we headed south on 206/207 just long enough to turn east on to Willow Creek Road which runs right past the Willow Creek Dam.
We should have stopped to take a picture because it looks like it's built from concrete blocks. I'm sure it's not, but that was the appearance. We followed the road on into Ukiah where we found this funny little sculpture made out of car parts.
South again on NF 52 toward Granite. This is a nice twisty road through the Umatilla National Forest. It's really from this point on that the day went from great roads with beautiful scenery to more of the same, mile after mile. It was in this stretch that we thought to take some pictures of each of us going through a nice corner. Bill got himself set on a corner and took some of the three of us. Dave's and mine turned out pretty good. A bit later, I returned the favor at a different spot. Now it needs to be said that I'm a lousy photographer, so my first shot of Bill isn't so good. Jay's however turned out very nice.
Granite itself is a tiny little town with only a few houses and the ones near the highway are unpainted and give the look of a really old town.
This little chapel was a good example of how they looked. From Granite we headed toward Sumpter. If you get on to Google Maps or a similar site and zoom in on the road between Granite and Sumpter you'll see the fun we had. Lots of turns as we wound our way through the forest. Now Bill had thought there was a ghost town near Sumpter, or perhaps was Sumpter itself, but a surprise was in store when we got there.
Tom Clark
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Intellitect, living in Spokane, Washington. I also do a little development work on the side. And I love riding motorcycles all over the country with my friends.
