Took a little ride today and snapped a few pictures.
I've posted pictures from here before, but in the center right hand portion of the image is another pullout/overlook of La Grande:
This is the view looking towards to spot the previous picture was taken. The brown area in the middle ot the image and about 30% of the way from the left is the spot the first image was taken:
It kind of gives the perspective of the valley.
We decided to had west and stopped at the "Historic Arch Bridge.". Not much there except the bridge over the RR tracks, but it is kind of neat. They certainly don't build them this way any more.
We drove out to Hillgard Junction State Park, which is a somewhat unremarkable park located next to the Interstate. This is a picture of the campground looking SE along the Grande Rhonde River. It also happens to dit right on top of one loop of the Oregon Trail.
The river runs from the right of the picture and bends to the left through the valley just ahead of the semi in the picture. The Trail came down the hill behind the trees in the left center and crossed the GR Riveraround the corner in the valley. They would sometimes camp on this side of the river as they had some work to do climing into the Blues from here.
The hill to the left was quite an obstacle and they used "block and tackles" to make it up the hill. They had a choice of traveling up 5 Points Creek on the other side of this hill and climbing that side. The other option was to come around to this side and climb it from here.
This picture was taken from the same spot, but a slightly different perspective. The trail would have come from the right and turned uphill just out of the left side of the picture.
This picture shows the general area where this loop of theTrail headed up. The maps I've seen are not exact, but it does run up this hill. To the far left, in the trees is a natural draw that seems to be where the Trail started up on this side of this hiil.
Next trip I'm going to look at the area on the other side of this hill and stop on the highway entrance ramp to see if there is any evidence of ruts. I don't think there is, but it's worth a look.