Greetings from Boardman, OR

I'm on the road again, this time en route to Eastern Oregon University in La Grande for a meeting Friday and Saturday. I decided to bring the family and leave a little early. We didn't leave Portland till almost 5 pm, so we didn't make it all the way to La Grande tonight -- which is why I'm typing this from a motel room in Boardman, OR. Boardman is a town of a little over 2000 people, positioned in the northwest quadrant of The Middle of Nowhere. It's sandwiched between the Boardman Bombing Range (which apparently isn't used anymore, so we might actually get some sleep) and the Umatilla Ordnance Depot, a/k/a Oregon's very own chemical weapons dump. If you follow the link, you'll see that the description of the place is under the header Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's why they couldn't find any WMD in Iraq--they're all over here in Oregon, probably upwind from my motel room.

Lest you think Boardman has nothing to offer except military targets, we did discover a lovely beach on the Columbia River tonight. I got some great pictures of the sunset over the river, but you'll have to wait till I get home to see them, since I forgot to pack my card reader. There's a great paved trail along the river too, which would have been very inviting if a) I weren't still sick, and b) the wind didn't make my eyes water within about 15 seconds. Yeah, I'm pathetic.

Tomorrow we're heading for La Grande, but I think we'll take the scenic route and stop by Lehman Hot Springs for a dip in the mineral pools. That should be a pleasant change from bombing ranges and chemical weapons.