We left Friday morning and visited the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center just outside Baker City. This is a great place to get a feeling of what life on the Oregon Trail was like and what so many people went through to get to Oregon. Most of these people were NOT people who grew up on the frontier - many were Europeans who first crossed the Atlantic to get to this country, then traveled to the Mid-West where they got outfitted for the trip west. They had to deal with Indians, bad weather, and buffalo herds. The girls even got to see (& feel) what a buffalo was like.We left the Oregon Trail and drove up Sumpter Valley, west of Baker City. This area has a great gold mining history. Gold was discovered here in the 1860s and the valley was changed forever by the mining activities that took place there. We camped at Union Creek Campground on Phillips Lake. I brought a group of Scouts here several years ago. We had the best campsite in the campground - it was like sitting in front of a picture window with the lake in view - except there was no window!
On Saturday morning, we had pancakes & bacon for breakfast - I got to refresh my pancake flipping skills with the griddle! After breakfast, we drove just a few miles up the road to the Sumpter Valley Railway station in McEuen. This railway carried logs, lumber, mining supplies & people during the gold mining days. A group of volunteers got together in the 1970s to restore the railway so others could experience the train ride. 
It was a lot of fun & a great day for a train ride. It was a little cool that morning but the train car was warm - in the back corner of that car you may be able to see the pot-bellied stove - they had a nice little fire in there to take the chill out of the air.The train ride took us further up the valley to the town of Sumpter. Along the way, we passed miles & miles of tailings (basically piles of rock) from the mining activities. When you see what was done to this valley to find gold, you can't help but ask: who or what did this? When you arrive in Sumpter, you see what left all those tailings behind - the Sumpter Gold Dredge.
If ever there was a "monster" in the machinery world, this was it! It may not look like much in the photo but the dredge was as big as a large riverboat, over five stories high. The boom at the front of the dredge has 72 buckets, each weighing over a ton; these buckets were attached to each other, forming a long chain which moved through the ground scooping up soil & rock and carrying it into the dredge. 
Inside, the excavated soil & rock went through sluices & separators which removed the gold and sent the tailings out the back of the dredge. The dredge sat on a pool of water, which it moved around the valley by removing the ground in front of it & sending the spoils out the back. It's really an impressive sight! This particular dredge operated from the 1930s to 1954. It was operated by 3-man crews in shifts which kept it running 24 hours a day, every day of the year except Independence Day & Christmas. The dredge was able to process 300,000 cubic feet of material each month. About $4.5 million in gold was removed from the valley by this dredge. It fostered a bustling economy in the valley while it operated but left behind an environmental disaster! The valley will never look like it once did - but it is still beautiful and a great place to visit, especially if you like old trains. 
The girls (actually, all of us!) got a chance to pan for gold - we all found "color" & brought home some gold & garnets. At first, the girls didn't think they wanted to pan for gold, but as they watched others doing, they got interested pretty quickly. Afterwards, we wandered into town where Sumpter had a community flea market going on. It was like visiting a county fair - there were booths set up selling all kinds of things & lots of of food booths - a great place to get one's fill of greasy food. We got ours in a big batch of curly fries!When we returned to camp, Hannah wanted to get in a hike before dinner.
We hiked along the shoreline trail to the dam and learned that Laurie attracted ticks! We haven't camped during tick season for a long time - and it hadn't been long enough! These were pretty big ticks so they were easy to spot but it creeped us out having to keep looking for them. The girls checked their legs for ticks after our hike, then Laurie, Hannah, & Alex headed for the restroom to strip down for a better search. I was on my own. I found one later as I was getting into my sleeping bag - headed for parts I would rather not share with a tick! We're pretty sure we didn't bring any home with us - at least, we haven't found any yet.On Sunday, I wanted to take a different route home, heading east towards Hells Canyon, then west again past Joseph, Enterprise, and Elgin. It's too bad that in the 80 miles between Baker City and the Hells Canyon overlook that no one posted a sign telling drivers they would find the forest highway blocked by SNOW four miles from the overlook! We had to turn around & go all the way back to Baker City - 160 miles/about 4 hours of driving and we were back where we started! We still had a great camping experience - we think the girls enjoyed it. It was the first in her life for Alex - we hope she gets a chance to go camping in Kazakhstan.
