Northwest adventure (day 9)

Thursday, August 7, 2008
Oregon, Idaho, Utah

The final day of our adventure. Our motel offered a full continental breakfast, which we ate before packing and leaving. We stopped to get stamps canceled at the Ontario post office and took pictures of the Holy Rosary Hospital where I was born nearly six decades ago.

We then drove to Nyssa, where we saw the stake center where I was baptized fifty-one years ago this week. We drove by and took pictures of the Owyhee Ward chapel, where I went to church until I was nearly ten years old. We stopped in Adrian (current population about 140 people) and took pictures of the school I attended through most of the fourth grade, had stamps canceled in our trip books, and otherwise toured the little town.

We crossed the Snake River just south of Adrian and drove the six miles to where our farm was located in the Big Bend area of eastern Oregon bordering on the State Line Road. The farm is still there, but the house, the barn, the trees are all gone. The foundation of the little house is still visible. While we were stopped taking pictures, a pickup came down the hill and stopped to see if we were having car trouble (why otherwise would a car be stopped out here in the middle of nowhere?), and when the couple in the pickup saw the camera concluded we were not having car trouble. I mentioned we were taking pictures of the place I had moved from when I was nearly ten years old. The lady in the pickup said, "Oh, the Cleverlys." I was utterly amazed that someone would remember the family from nearly fifty years ago. They said their name was Adams, I think, and that they had lived just up over the hill for many years.

I also showed them the little swimming hole just down the road where we used to swim in the drain ditch. We then continued on through Wilder and Greenleaf to Caldwell. I pointed out where my mother used to work at Simplot's. We then went to Nampa, had some stamps canceled there, and drove by the site of the old Nampa Fifth Ward building (which is no longer there), where I attended church from age ten until after my mission more than a decade later. We drove by and took pictures of Central Junior High, where I attended school when I was in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. We drove by the site of the Dairy Queen I worked at in high school, now occupied by a Subway, so we stopped there to eat. We drove by and took pictures of Nampa High School, where I attended school in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. We drove out south of town to see the house we moved to in 1959 when we came from Oregon. We drove by and took pictures of Scism School, where I attended the three-room school for parts of the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. We drove by where our next house in Nampa was located on Colorado Avenue (which is no longer there). And we drove by the final house I lived in in Nampa on Ventura Drive (it is still there and looks very much the same as I remember it). Michael can remember going to that house to visit his grandparents.

We then got on I-84 and headed toward home. With a couple of rest stops, a stop in Bliss to buy gas, and a stop in Snowville, Utah, to find its post office (which had closed an hour earlier than we arrived), we reached Layton about seven-thirty. We were glad to be home.

I unloaded my stuff from Michael's minivan and put it in our minivan (which Shauna had borrowed from us while we were gone; she also filled it with gas and washed it). I ate supper with Michael and Shauna's family, spaghetti that Shauna had made, and then drove home to Bountiful. It was wonderful to see Claudia again. We called Rachael to wish her a happy birthday. She and Robert and the girls are in Illinois visiting Robert's parents and had just returned from spending a couple of days in Kentucky. Today is her thirty-third birthday.