THE GHOST TOWN OF SHANIKO, OREGON

I wish I could tell you that we got to sleep last night, and in reality we did, but only until 3am, so I'm not sure that counts.  We got back to the yard yesterday after making the delivery in Coeur d'Alene, ID and promptly took showers and got into our pickup and drove over for Mongolian BBQ for lunch/dinner.  It worked out that we each had left overs which we took back to the truck for breakfast this morning.  With stomachs full, we had no energy left to do anything but lay on our beds and pray we would not get beeped with a new assignment.

At 5pm, we were beeped to hook up to a trailer and head to the Tyson Meat plant in Wallua, WA.  The message only said " take 70793 to Tyson".  Since there were no times added, and since we still had no sleep, and couldn't even leave until 11pm, we made the executive decision to stay put and sleep until at least 3am, because no one would be in the office to even give us any dispatch info until 6am.  We pulled into Tyson at 6am, dropped our empty trailer, and was then shortly there after given our new assignment.

We were happy to find out that the load was ready 5 hours ahead of schedule and we hooked up, scaled the load, and were on our way south by 9am.  This load has three deliveries, one in Newark, CA Sunday morning, and the other two in Vernon, CA on Monday morning.  Barring any unforeseen circumstances, this will be a nice easy run, during normal day time hours, and all the night sleeping we could want.

So with a little extra time on our hands, we decided, that after passing through the town of Shaniko hundreds of times over the past 5 years, that we would actually stop and take a look around.  Obvious to us, was that this town is not much more than a ghost town.  I imagine it is a bit more active during the summer months when the candy and ice cream store are open for business, but today there was only the Post Office and a gas station, with inoperable gas pumps that were open.

I love the feel of old buildings, and especially fell in love with the hotel, which is up for sale.  I love old brick buildings, and I could see this place coming back to life, along with the cafe next door.  Meandering around, I joked to Craig about finding him a new truck to drive, which looked like it has been parked in the same location since before my birth.  In all it took about 15 minutes for us to check out the town, and then it was back on the road to La Pine, OR where we made our home for the night.