New Roads New Places Day 2

273 miles today, but still it was a long day due to stopping at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center near Baker City for a couple of hours.  It also got pretty hot at times but not for too long. 

So how was the "Oregon Dragon"?  I took a couple of videos on the road, but the wifi at this motel is slooooow and I will have to post them later.  As a tease, here is a picture of the Zumo on the way to hwy 245:

The only fly in the ointment was that the road had tar snakes!  Not bad ones.....they mostly ran across the road, not along it, and they were not wide, but still I don't relish the little wiggle they cause at times. 

Actually, a better road, and completely unexpected, was the section of hwy 71 in Idaho between Oxbow dam and Brownlee dam.  Better pavement and better sight lines around the curves, but I had taken the video cam off the bike. 

The Oregon Trail Interpretive Center was not a planned stop, but we thought we had all kinds of time so decided to give it a look. 

We spent most of the time there watching a show by a man and a woman dressed in period costume who told stories about life on the trail and sang songs and played numerous instruments that the pioneers carried.  They were good.  The displays were also top notch and we could have spent a lot more time there.  Here are a couple of shots of the displays:







The parking lot was kind of soft asphalt in the heat and I worried about the bike sidestand sinking into the pavement,  so I did a little "dumpster diving" to find some help:

No aluminum cans, but found a plastic pop bottle:

It did the job and there were no tipovers.

Today seemed to be a day of following beautiful creeks and rivers through green valleys surrounded by parched brown hills.  Here is a typical scene:

With a time change in Idaho, we didn't get to McCall until after 6:30, and by the time we got settled in and had dinner it was too late to explore the town, so we are going to do that tomorrow morning. 

Here are some shots of contented riders at the end of the day: