A bush pilot, and we haven’t reached Alaska

After some morning conversation with Jay and Connie, we leave the Ana Reservoir RV Park for the town of John Daly, taking what seems the most direct albeit deserted route.  The Garmin pleads with us to take the next road left, but these repeatedly turn out either to be nonexistent or nothing more than 100-yard stubs into farms.

Much of the country along Hwy 395 looks like the 395 high-desert in California, but it eventually gets  interesting.

Clyde Holiday State Park, John Day OR

We enter some mountainous areas topping at about 5000’ and descend to Canyon City (there was gold here) and the town of John Day (nobody seems to know, but possibly a trapper that was left behind on a long ago expedition).  On the outskirts we pull in to the very attractive Clyde Holiday State Park, parking next to an Airstream of our same year owned by WBCCI members from Spokane named Lee and Gayle.  Lee, it turns out, was a bush pilot out of Juneau for 15 years and sometimes shuttled people to the Taku Glacier Lodge near Juneau.  Maybe ten years ago we and our young sons spent a day at the lodge, most memorably fighting the worst mosquitoes we had ever seen, but otherwise having a great time.