Below are the next-to-last batch of photos I will be uploading. The first group is from the trip on the Snake River to the site(s) of the killings of a group of Chinese gold miners in 1887. Writing a fictional piece about the event has been on my plate for some time, so visiting the site was a significant part of the background research. (I was also fortunate to be able to meet with a journalist in Oregon who just finished a non-fiction manuscript about the massacre and cover-up.)

I hope to finish writing the wrap-up piece in the next couple of days and also upload the last photos.


Our jetboat -- speeds up to 40 mph, with a draft of two and half-feet to work around the rapids on the river. It's also the US Mail boat since the ranches along the Snake are not accessible by land.

Petroglyphs on the rocks about 10 miles upriver from Lewiston. (It's the dark rock just right of center. They look like lizard-men....or aliens? "Click" on the photo to enlarge it.

The "Queen of the West", an excursion ship coming from Portland to Lewiston on her weekly trip.

Morning haze on the river as we headed away from Lewiston.

The brochure didn't deliver on mountain lions, but mountain goats and elk-horn were sometimes visible grazing on the hills. Can you spot three? (Enlarging the photo by clicking on it might help.)

Tied up at a refueling stop for food and diesel on the Snake.

Approaching the section where the miners worked the river for "flour" gold. It was so-called because of its fineness and amount of work to find. The Chinese were working claims where the easy-pickins' were gone and the white miners were too lazy to continue. (This is not racism on my part but what everyone acknowledged.

Panoramic view getting closer to the massacre site.

Terrain just before Dug Bar Ranch, where the murderers are conjectured to have plotted.

Another view of Robinson's Gulch, the secondary killing site.

Approaching Robinson's Gulch, where another group of miners were working and killed.

Approaching Dug Bar Ranch (see caption for next photo).

Dug Bar Ranch, where the murderers likely stayed plotting the killings. It's just a few miles south of Robinson's Gulch, the secondary murder-site.

Approaching Deep Creek (left edge), this is part of the killing ground of those Chinese miners.

Approaching Deep Creek on the Idaho side.

This is Deep Creek, the site where the majority of the killings took place. None of the terrain was as I had imagined. The captain of the jetboat let me off to look around and have a minute of silence.

The Kirkwood Ranch, some 90 miles upriver from Lewiston, was the turn-around point of the trip. During the Great Depression, a future governor of Idaho and his family (wife, three kids) lived there for more than a decade. The ranch was only accessible via the river.

The log cabin houses a museum of items from the period when the family lived there in the 1930s.

Blacksmith building. (Note the natural air-conditioning.)

Kirkwood Ranch looking north.

The historic ranch has a collection of farming equipment.

Looking upriver (south) from the Kirkwood ranch.

Leaving Dan and Sally's cabin outside of Lolo, MT, these two bunnies, each the size of a large cat, took their sweet time crossing the road. Even after I lowered the window and shouted "Rabbit stew!!"

Blue skies, white clouds, green fields, sunshine....Oregon in the Spring north of Ashland on the way to Eugene. br />

It's my blog and if I want a photo of a grain elevator, by golly I'll have it! (But look at the clouds and the colors!)

Yeah, nothing going on here: I just liked the clouds and the perspective of the road. It's my view for most of every day.

Outside Portland after meeting with Greg Noyes, the journalist who has done extensive research on the Chinese miners massacre, I came across a sight not likely in Philadelphia. The scene: a heavy downpour, 3 lanes of Interstate slowed to a crawl as both the merging lane (where I was) and the right lane squeeze left, and two Tualatin Police Department cruisers creeping along, one in the middle lane and one 50 feet behind on the highway shoulder. As I finally merged, I saw what they were escorting: an extended family of geese comprised of 10 or so "teenagers" plus their parents, all taking a VERY leisure-paced Sunday morning constitutional. When I tried to visualize the Philly police and Schuykill drivers faced with the same situation, every image carnage and a cloud of flying feathers...

Another view of the geese on I-5. br />

Walking to my car in Eugene, OR after lunch at an anarchist vegetarian cafe -- where the metal on/in the wait-staff outweighed the flatware on the table -- I heard the familiar sounds of a Brazilian percussion band: the deep "Surdo" (Portuguese for "deaf") bass drums that anchor the rhythm, the snares and cow-bells, triangles and tambourines, and the whistle of the master signalling the changes. (The "Surdo" is my favorite to play in the Brazilian percussion workshop in Phila that I attend occasionally.) I ran around the corner and there they were, a local group of Eugenians? Eugenores? Eugeniacs? bringing a tropical sound to complement the tropical-like precipitation (but not temperatures) of the area. I stayed there grinning and swaying for long minutes.

One section of the percussion group. The plumage doesn't quite match the Mummers' in Philadelphia, but the music was, well, music to my home-sick ears.

The group had two dancers, who made a valiant effort at the Samba. However, truth be told and PC-ness be damned, if white men can't jump -- and I'll add that Chinese men can't dance, unless intoxicated-- a ten year-old Brazilian would have made these two look like they were standing still (which they almost were...). Oh heck, as long as I am being critical: they were also over-dressed and under-rhythmed for "Sambanistas"!

Rare is the homecoming that meets expectations, and mine, a few hours ago, was no exception. The gray and heavy air, typical of a Philadelphia Summer, started while still some three hundred (!) miles away, just east of Pittsburgh. (By the last fifty miles, the local weather report was predicting heavy thunderstorms. They were accurate.) Life sometimes being in the timing, I also approached the last portion, the infamous Schuykill Expressway, at rush hour, and the combination added an extra hour of driving, despite my preemptive detour to sit out the worse of it at the Apple Computer store in the (also infamous) King of Prussia Mall.

It's a strange feeling being back. After 8,969 miles and 33 nights spent in 25 different beds, I will be sleeping in my own in a few minutes, as I am tired and have much to do to establish a new routine. While the familiar is a safe-harbor and a welcome sight, the voices greeting me as I opened the door were: "Read me! Pay me!" (mail), "Dust me! Wipe me!" (shelves, surfaces), "Wash me!" ( a little muffled, being the clothes in my bags), and "Vacuum me!" (floors, rugs). Not quite the same as toddler-Julia shouting "Daddy!!" and running toward me with open arms and a wide smile…twenty years ago.

The rest of the photos and narrative – I’ve been "processing" the trip these last 1600+ miles from Deadwood, SD to Philadelphia -- will be posted when I get through the voices, so check again. It is good to have Home around me after having to carry it inside. I am looking forward to the many new beginnings.