Native Earth

We made it up to southwestern Idaho for my dad's 80th b-day celebration tomorrow. The Best Western, Caldwell Inn and Suites, gets good ratings so far. Very large rooms. A pool the grandkids are enjoying. My son is enjoying the hot tub with the Westminster Women's Basketball team here for a tourney. Free internet. It's a win-win-win-win.

My usual travelogue about the pioneer trails and old Highway 30 (particularly with Bliss that used to have cool, cement dinosaurs - kinda like Vernal, UT). And the features on top of Mountain Home mesa (no mountain and not my home). I pointed out to the south and west how we could see to Nevada in the peaks of the Owyhees (I've been to Duck Valley Rez on business) and the far end being in Oregon. As the sun set I tried to explain how the Easterners have it all wrong pronouncing a "gone" at the end of my native state. It hasn't "gone" anywhere. And it has to match the rhyme of the state song, "Land of the Empire Builders/Land of the Golden Sun/Hail to Thee, Land of Freedom/My Oregon."

Vintage Bliss

And of course I added the whole story how the land was named for a mythical river that maybe could have been confused with the one that ended up the Columbia. But it didn't get you across the Northwest Passage. That only comes now with the ice melt at the top of the world.

Tomorrow, as I proposed to my sons-in-law and grandsons, we journey just a few miles west to see where I was born. The dirt, spuds, beets, volcanic soil that formed my bones. Oh yeah, there was the raw, unpasteurized milk too. Strong bones in this earth.

We will stride the mighty Snake (well, cross in a car) and see the birth-home just off the Oregon Trail. I was born almost aside the trail. Ancient trails run like great rivers in my veins.

A Nephew and two of my Boys at Oregon Trail ruts on Keeney Pass just across the Snake from Old Fort Boise site.
The one on the left is in Chile right now. The middle one is my Son in Japan. The third kneeling is my Boy who served in Oregon and lives there now.