Wherein Moominmama reunites with family in the Hells Canyon and Eagle Cap wilderness of northeast Oregon...

Moominmama's arrival in northeast Oregon celebrates a major goal. When planning this trip, New Hampshire was the starting point, and Oregon, where my brother lives, was the end point. Every stop in between came from planning travel between the two. 

My brother and I met up in Enterprise, Oregon and spent the next few days in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest near the Imnaha River. As I expected, there were the towering pines and rocky streams. 

But what surprised me were the parts of this country dominated by enormous sand-colored mountains of tan and rusty rock, covered in dry grass. 

Hells Canyon drops a mile and a half down, parted by the Snake River on the Oregon/Idaho border to form the deepest river gorge in North America. Volcanic activity has shaped this area in combination with the collision of tectonic plates that shoved up what was ocean floor and formed the mountain ranges. 

Lava flows once covered roughly 70,000 square miles of Oregon, Washington and western Idaho. Now add to that all the glacial activity that tore at the stone, leaving ice-carved peaks with rocky detritus draining down their sides. 

My brother and his wife have been camping in this area for years and sharing photos that made me want to see the area for myself. This is a rock lover's paradise, with plentiful examples of volcanic, igneous and sedimentary rocks in all shapes and sizes - basalt and granite and limestone, among others.

I paid a great deal more attention to each of these rocks than I might otherwise as I had to navigate them with a sore ankle! I didn't want to give up on planned hikes, and while walking on a flat surface posed no problem, tilting my ankle the wrong way was painful!

So the views I got here came only when I stopped and dared to look up from carefully planting my feet each step of the way!

For most of the hikes, we had the companionship of my brother's dogs, Walter and Lola, who stopped to sniff the trailside or leave their calling cards while I picked my way around rocks. This made it less obvious that I was the slowpoke here!

On one of our camping days, we took a trip to the Hells Canyon Overlook and the Snake River below. Instead of risking my ankle, we went swimming, with the dogs playing fetch with a sponge ball in the water. They loved the game so much, they played until they were shivering, just like kids who won't come out of the water even when their lips turn blue.

After some consideration, I decided to swim across to Idaho -- stepping up on a rock on the far side and waving to my brother before coming back to Oregon just to show I could! The current, which was stiff on the Idaho side, gave me a good workout and allowed me to feel I'd accomplished something.

In the evenings after our outings, we shared dinner at our campsite. Unfortunately, the dry conditions meant campfires were banned so we went to bed early, bundling up against temperatures that dropped into the low 40s.

After they left, I was fortunate to have time to stay another couple days. Among other things, I went into the nearby town of Joseph. This community is named after the Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph, the elder. It was members of the Nez Perce who helped Lewis and Clark's expedition as they came over the Bitterroot Mountains, exhausted and starving before their final push to the coast. 

The relationships between whites and the Nimipuu, as they call themselves, (Nez Perce being a French term and based on a misunderstanding) was initially very good.

But as the whites invaded and invalidated treaties -- first because of a gold rush, later a timber and settlement rush -- anger grew. Old Chief Joseph, the leader of the Wallowa band of the Nimipuu, is famous for refusing to sign a revised treaty that would have deprived them of much of their land. 

His son, Young Chief Joseph, later fought back against efforts to move them to a diminished reservation in Idaho, fleeing north toward Canada with his people. He remains famous for the speech that includes the line "I will fight no more forever."

But the Nimipuu are still very active in this area (I picked up their community radio station on my drive), and Old Chief Joseph is buried just outside Joseph. I was touched when visiting the gravesite, how many gifts were left there, painted rocks and other tokens plus ribbons and woven bands hanging from branches nearby.

After months of westward movement, the Moominhouse is now pointed east! Moominmama heads next to the Tetons and, in less than two weeks, will begin a part-time job in Yellowstone! By mid-October, I will be back on the move and heading home -- first to Rochester, NY and then New Hampshire. I look forward to seeing many of you then!