The Real Oregon

Joseph, Oregon, is an intentionally quaint town (though not as dreadful as Sisters) in the far northeast corner of Oregon, near Wallowa Lake and the Eagle Cap Wilderness, for which it serves as a gateway. Some years ago it became a center for bronze casting and has billed itself ever since as an art town, which it is if you squint hard enough.

Valley Bronze, the foundry that started it all, is essentially the art business in Joseph. The work they do is not bad so long as you’re fond of heroic cowboys-Indians-wildlife bronzes.

The best places to stay are the Best Western (in Enterprise, five miles away), which has a wonderful view of the mountains and is right next door to the Forest Service visitor center, or perhaps the Indian Lodge Motel, a ’50s vintage highway-side motel whose main claim to stardom is that it once was owned by Walter Brennan. Restaurants on the whole are determinedly mediocre in both Joseph and Enterprise (”You’re welcome to some in and sit down but you’re going to have to wait a long time to eat,” was the kind of cheery greeting we got in one), except that we had good food and friendly service in the Mexican family restaurants called La Laguna, with incarnations in both towns.

The countryside around Joseph is drop-dead gorgeous, though, and Eagle Cap is Oregon’s largest wilderness area. If you visit, be sure and take the tram that goes up Mount Howard, and then treat yourself to an insanely huge ice cream cone at the Matterhorn Village shop across the street.

Just over the California border, south of the Oregon city of Klamath Falls, Lava Beds National Monument is a little known and fascinating part of the federal National Park system. Established in the 1920s, the monument contains an extensive system of lava beds resulting from an ancient shield volcano eruption. If that sounds like eighth-grade geology, take heart: the beds contain miles of lava tubes — long underground caverns — that the park service has minimally improved, making it safe and possible for amateur spelunkers to explore, equipped with little more than a good flashlight and a helmet of some kind. (Both are available at the visitor center.)

Wandering these lava tubes is a wild experience if you’ve never done any caving that didn’t involve a guide and a cavern with electric lights. Even though the tubes are pretty safe, and it’s difficult to get thoroughly lost, the first time you come to a fork in the pitch black, a quarter mile underground, you’ll feel your pulse start to beat a little faster. You can go for easy, stand-up walking tubes, or you can spend hundreds of meters duck-walking under a low ceiling. If you’re really determined you can crawl for long distances on your belly.

Lava Beds was also the scene of the tragic Modoc Indian war of 1872-73, in which Captain Jack and a band of renegade Modocs held off the U.S. Army for months by hiding out in the caves.