Chapter 16 ~ Page 216
He then turned on his heel, took a hitch in his red suspenders, and disappeared without another word. BJ chuckled, and was the first in our family to state, "Hey, you know, Stevenson would be a fun place to live."
A little further up the street we came upon a group of people waiting at the curb. What now? Ed McLarney was there focusing his camera. Of course. The justice of the peace that had married us—locally called "Oliver Wendall" Nidiert—was standing there with hamburgers to go for five. A picture of Bernice and I kissing, in front of the JP and the barber shop where we had begun our adventures together, eventually made the front page of the Skamania County Pioneer.
Impressed by this curious mixture of nostalgia and small town sentimentality, Bernice was the next to add, "Stevenson would be a fun place to live."
Taking our lunch on the run, we rode on further up state highway 14, to the trailhead of Washington's Cascade Crest Trail, our last section of the PCT system. Just out of town this narrow, winding road, that parallels the Columbia, begins to climb. In places the way through was blasted out of walls of basalt. And because of the traffic, logging trucks making time to keep the lumber mills of the county busy, and tourists headed for the famous fishing along the Wind River, often we were forced to ride outside of the guardrails, on a berm of loose gravel, over a drop off of several hundred feet to the water below.
Our guide here, from the saddle club, was a character named Roy Dudley. Best described as a pint-sized combination of Will Rogers, Harry S. Truman, and Gabby Hayes, he too was a "fun" person. Somebody I would enjoy to have as a neighbor. And that is exactly what happened. Roy found us a place to 'winter'.
'Dudley Do-right's' line of patter was so distracting I didn't realize until later that Roy had our route planned down to each step. At every corner he had something way off in the distance we just had to take a look at—an Indian head formed of rock, a cave, a historical site—thus helping us pass these dangerous miles with, what seemed, a little less anxiety.
However, at one corner that required we travel on the pavement, we almost left Colette behind in this community: permanently. An anxious driver, annoyed at following a horse's rear end for one extra minute, pulled around us with a squeal of tires, and a blast of horn. Within seconds, what I had been dreading all day, nearly came to be.
A little further up the street we came upon a group of people waiting at the curb. What now? Ed McLarney was there focusing his camera. Of course. The justice of the peace that had married us—locally called "Oliver Wendall" Nidiert—was standing there with hamburgers to go for five. A picture of Bernice and I kissing, in front of the JP and the barber shop where we had begun our adventures together, eventually made the front page of the Skamania County Pioneer.
Impressed by this curious mixture of nostalgia and small town sentimentality, Bernice was the next to add, "Stevenson would be a fun place to live."
Taking our lunch on the run, we rode on further up state highway 14, to the trailhead of Washington's Cascade Crest Trail, our last section of the PCT system. Just out of town this narrow, winding road, that parallels the Columbia, begins to climb. In places the way through was blasted out of walls of basalt. And because of the traffic, logging trucks making time to keep the lumber mills of the county busy, and tourists headed for the famous fishing along the Wind River, often we were forced to ride outside of the guardrails, on a berm of loose gravel, over a drop off of several hundred feet to the water below.
Our guide here, from the saddle club, was a character named Roy Dudley. Best described as a pint-sized combination of Will Rogers, Harry S. Truman, and Gabby Hayes, he too was a "fun" person. Somebody I would enjoy to have as a neighbor. And that is exactly what happened. Roy found us a place to 'winter'.
'Dudley Do-right's' line of patter was so distracting I didn't realize until later that Roy had our route planned down to each step. At every corner he had something way off in the distance we just had to take a look at—an Indian head formed of rock, a cave, a historical site—thus helping us pass these dangerous miles with, what seemed, a little less anxiety.
However, at one corner that required we travel on the pavement, we almost left Colette behind in this community: permanently. An anxious driver, annoyed at following a horse's rear end for one extra minute, pulled around us with a squeal of tires, and a blast of horn. Within seconds, what I had been dreading all day, nearly came to be.
|
|
|
Text and Photographs © Barry Murray 1971-2007 Mac&Murray Multimedia