(Prt 3) Homeschool Oregon Trail Field Trip Through the Blues

Here we all are at the second section of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Park at Spring Creek. The park host was at the camp display and answered a bunch of questions and explained the different parts of the wagon and some of the goods they brought along. Of course, we roped him into taking a picture of all of us before we moved on.

This was super interesting and something I've never seen before. Beth is holding up a pressed, dried tea tile. The park host got it out of the wagon to show it to us. They would bring these on the trail and scrape some off to make tea. They were brought over from China as you can see by the design and the Chinese writing. I couldn't believe they let us touch it.











Camp kids. This got me in the mood to do some Dutch oven cooking. Beth said she and her hubby like Dutch oven cooking, too.















Here are the ruts (to the right of the kids) along the Spring Creek portion of the Oregon Trail. This part of the journey was extremely difficult because the terrain afforded a steep climb for Oregon Trail travelers. They had to stay on top of the mountains because it was the least amount of grade. The problem was that the water was down in the ravines and they'd have to haul water a 1/2 mile. They had real issues with losing livestock and even people in the Blues because of how thick the timber was.


I didn't get a picture of it, but we also got to look at an old stage coach road. It was a main artery, as it was the Oregon-California (or is it California-Oregon?) Stage Road.

Also, as we drove by Hilgard State Park, we saw the 3 sets of wagon ruts going down the steep hill to where they forded the Grande Rhonde River and then traveled up to Spring Creek. It was a great example of how the trail would shift due to wash out, etc.

Well that's it. Hope you all have a chance to see this for yourself some day.