We head on north on 395. Sage brush prairie gives way to the lush pine covered mountains of the Umatilla National Forest.  For much of the journey the road twists and turns is valleys it shares with tumbling creeks and rivers swollen by spring melt off.  The smells of spring and evergreen are intoxicating.  I just want to stop where I am for a while and soak it in.

We top Battle Mountain and in a flash it all changes again.  For as far as I can see it is rolling grassland.  Green and golden blades move in the wind like waves on a shoreline.  This is ranchland and as the local in the Pendleton visitor center put it, “we grow what we can with what God gives us”.   Irrigated row crops don’t take over until we approach the Columbia River.