Camping near water makes it seem like you are on a different planet for some campers (like me) who only do it once or twice a year. A few feet away is the upstream end of Hell's Canyon. The Snake River is blocked by dams of course.
A reservoir of water brings boaters with a furious sense of urgency, even off-season. What is the great attraction to water? This is not to run their sport down. It is just a chance to crawl into their heads.
Driving a motorboat across a lake seems interesting for 3 minutes or so. It just isn't all that exotic compared to driving a car to the grocery store. Of course, on a hot day in July or August, getting wet is a great way to cool off! Maybe much of the appeal of water doesn't come from its liquidness, but from it being public space. Back in the city, the boater is boxed in by private property, traffic, rules, etc.
The camping here is pinched between the reservoir and the road. It is noisy and poor quality, so I won't come back. Still, I'm glad I came, because it was here that the Oregon Trail said farewell to the Snake River and headed off to the northwest.
A seldom-visited historic spot literally along the Oregon Trail had me fluttering my eyelashes. The wagon wheels had developed the route into a still-visible, shallow swale. Read the diary of a woman on the trail, exactly 100 years before I was born. She might have known another woman who had a baby on the trail, and that baby's life could have overlapped with mine.
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