Shortly after leaving Boise, Idaho, we crossed the state line into another new state for the summer. "Welcome to Oregon!" Just a couple miles down the road, we stopped in at the Oregon Welcome Center to pick up some information about the parts of this state that we are planning to visit.
We are going to be in Malheur County first, in the southeast corner of Oregon. So we picked up a travel brochure that described the sites to see here. While this booklet is designed for tourists, we were surprised to see a full-page ad that was describing the effort to get the state line moved. The ad described the voting process to move most of the state of Oregon into Idaho's jurisdiction. 
As we drove deeper into Malheur County, we see that we are in "Onion Country USA." Who knew that most of the onions grown in the United States come from this valley? We spoke with an onion farmer, who was also a proponent of moving the state border. We got quite a lengthy description of the reasons for the move. The short list is that this valley has nothing in common with urban liberal Oregon. Malheur County, Oregon, gets only Idaho channels on their televisions, they are the only county that is on Mountain time like Idaho (while the rest of the state of Oregon is on Pacific time), and they are a conservative agricultural county that blends with Idaho's ideologies much better than Oregon's. The brochure listed more reasons that some Oregonians would like to be part of Idaho. Two of those reasons mentioned on the full-page ad were: "No arsonists or rioters set free" and "Less regulation and interference." Our onion farmer friend thinks that only Malheur County has a chance of being accepted into Idaho, and being let go by Oregon.
We felt comfortable in Malheur County, and we will be watching to see if the Oregon/Idaho state line is ever moved. One of the things we like about this county is the quilt-like squares that the different crops make on the horizon. From one spot we can see the striped alfalfa fields with their windrows, the harvested golden wheat stubble, and the tall tasseled corn fields. We can also see fields with the short pointy onion plants and the leafy sweet sugar beets. What a beautiful agricultural crazy quilt design!
We thought we had bad timing, because we were hoping to stay at the county fairgrounds RV park. But it is closed because the county fair is happening right now. So we are camping about 20 miles out of town at the county's Bully Creek Lake campground. Now we are thinking this is great timing, because we can spend the day at the Malheur County Fair!
Now that we know that we are in onion country, we were sure to see the onion entries at the fair. Denisa was raised as a 4-Her, winning ribbons at the county fair. So she was surprised to see that ribbons have been replaced with 1st and 2nd and 3rd place stickers here in Malheur county.
We've also noticed many sugar beet fields in our travels through Idaho, so we checked out the sugar beet entries as well.
After checking out all the 4-H indoor exhibits, we headed out to the barns. The novice showmanship competition was going on down at the pig barn.
We also watched the FFA beef show, and we applaud these young men and women for wearing those dark jackets in the heat today. Mark had one of those jackets from his days in high school, and that dark color soaks in the heat! This was an interesting "best pen of 3" competition.
But our favorite show was going on at the dairy barn. This is open-class showmanship, and we couldn't help but notice that all but one of these kids had the same last name. When we asked one of the fathers, we found they were all cousins. His son has been showing a dairy calf at this county fair since he was one and a half years old. That means he was barely walking good when he was pulling a calf around the ring!
These little Jersey calves are pretty!
You've got to love a couple of boys playing with John Deere toys in the dirt at the dairy calf show at the county fair. That's Americana at its best!
We play the game of trying to figure out the crops we see in our travels. When we saw that it was a harvest day, we pulled over to watch.
We've seen a lot of harvests, but this one had us stumped. What are the doing here?
From talking to our onion farmer friend at the fair, we got a hint of what they were doing. Then a google search confirmed it. They are cutting off the tall tops of each of the onion plants and putting them into those gray plastic barrels. They are harvesting onion seed.
While the county fair was in the big town of Ontario, the nearest town to our campground is Vale, Oregon. We soon recognized that this town has used many of its outside walls to become works of art. This mural covers the side of a church and is named, "Sunday Go to Meetin'."
to emigrants that came to work the land.
It celebrates past celebrations in "Patriots on Parade,"
and we have to say that the detail and the quality of these murals is first rate!
The newest mural celebrates the group of women that come together to do the hand-quilting of their beautiful fabric creations. According to the county's travel brochure, this local group has produced nearly 800 quilts over the years to raise money for various projects. Again, the detail of the fabric squares made it look like it should be in a museum, rather than on the side of the senior citizen building in Vale, Oregon.
We are a little off the usual tourist stops here at Bully Creek Campground. But we have to say that it's easier to find a camping spot here. The sunsets off the beaten path are pretty nice too. We think it's interesting to learn about the crops, the murals, the political process, and aspirations to move that sunset into Idaho.
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