Friday, August 28, 2009 – Canyonville

Well, no bath today. The lady who was supposed to be doing grooming duty won’t be working until Tuesday next week, and we’ll be gone by then. I’ll be a dirty dog. Actually, I don’t look that bad (Don says I don’t smell too bad either), I just look so much better right after a good grooming. I’m just not going to dwell on it.

We got our morning routine completed on schedule, which I like, and did some cleanup work on the rig and the truck, which kind of needed it. Don was kind enough not to touch my private compartment in the truck, which I have decorated with chewed-up sticks and used bones in a very tasteful manner. During lunch, Don was looking at a map that Geri had gotten from the Riddle City Hall yesterday, and discovered a marker titled “Yokum Grave” at a site just off the Yokum Road that runs between Riddle and Hiway 5. You remember from his Powell Valley expedition in Tennessee how he is about Yokum graves. We had to immediately mount an expedition to find this historic site. We all got in the truck and headed for Yokum Road; unfortunately, the roads which supposedly led to the Yokum Grave site turned out to be driveways leading to private residences. Geri was protesting loudly about Don’s determination to encroach on private property in search of his holy grail, and he backed off grudgingly. To mitigate his disappointment, we had to proceed to the Riddle Cemetery, which he had not previously visited, to find the remains of his ancestors. Don got me out of the truck, and I went off to hunt for Yokums. I quickly found the grave of a George Yokum, and signaled its location to Don by lifting my right rear leg. That seemed to get his attention, as he started shouting at me. We eventually found a lot of deceased Yokums, including Don’s Grandfather, who died ten years before Don was born, and his Great-Grandfather, who came across the plains on the Oregon Trail. During a prior visit to the Canyonville Cemetery, Don had found the grave of his Great-Great-Grandfather, who had been the leader of the pack on the Oregon Trudge.

After our invigorating visit to the cemetery, we drove up Cow Creek Road to see what remained of the famous Riddle nickel mine, which at one time had produced half the nickel mined in the United States. It appears that it’s now a sand and gravel operation with not a nickel’s worth of nickel left. We continued up Cow Creek Road, following the old Southern Pacific tracks which were the first rail connection between California and Oregon. It’s still in use, though most of the traffic is on a line east of the Cascades. The road and the rail line wind through a narrow canyon for miles; beautiful scenery, lots of curves, no traffic. We got back on the 5 at Glendale and headed back to Canyonville, with a brief stop at Azalea, so that Geri could see the old General Store there. It’s fallen on hard times since the last time Don was there, and they’ve walled off most of the interior space, and are selling only convenience foods for the most part. He got me a big bone shaped cookie at the store; when he presented it to me, I had to drop it and look at it in awe. It was one of the biggest cookies I had ever seen! I gave him my gaze of loving thankfulness, and proceeded to devour it.

When we got back to the rig, Don fixed some salmon for dinner and we all had good plates. We worked on the blog for awhile, and turned in early. Reunion day tomorrow, should be exciting. I’ll give you a full report!