(Taken from my notes).
Another long drive to Baker City. As on our last trip, we stopped at the New York City Sub Shop in The Dalles, where they make good subs on home-baked bread. Briefly drawn in to a monster truck show on TV. Melina keeps asking why they are called "monster" trucks.
Leave the Dalles at 2:40. Looks like we're driving into a thunderstorm.
The one-hour stretch from Baker to Halfway is gorgeous. The road winds through sagebrush-covered hills, following a stream through green fields filled with cattle. It's dusk and a big dark thunderstorm is on our tail; the landscape alternates between glowing yellow hills and purple sky in the saturated evening light.
Spent the first night at the Halfway Motel (the cheapest option, at $70). Clean, basic rooms. The other guests are a group of bikers (motorcycle bikers) and some Germans. We roll in with the storm, lightning flashing around us. We pass the luggage in though the first story window and go for a walk around the little town. It's a nice little place with lots of quaint old storefronts and wood buildings. There are flowers everywhere, in window boxes and front yards. There's a quaint inn, a tea garden, an acupuncturist, a newspaper, a restaurant or two, a few gift shops and mercantiles and a seedy bar. Several buildings are painted in funky colors, or otherwise decorated in unusual ways. On the other side of the buildings along Main Street there is open space back to the fields and mountains.
We stop and talk to a woman about her cats; she has 11. She knows the llama ranchers and gives us directions to their ranch; we talk about Portland and the weather. The storm has passed. I would definitely come back to Halfway. We asked if the winters here were bad; she said no, not so bad -- it only got down to -15 a few times last year, and there were four feet of snow for most of the winter. But not too bad.
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