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The plan, such as it was, consisted of driving to the eastern edge of Oregon and back, taking only forest roads. It turns out you can’t quite do that, and it would have taken longer than we had even if you could. But most importantly, after awhile, you get pretty tired of driving gravel roads through uninteresting forest.
But we didn’t know that yet. And undaunted we threw some sleeping bags and a change of clothes into the back of Les’ Volvo wagon and headed east. The last trip we had stayed at cheap motels. This time we were going to ‘camp’ although we had no tent, no way to cook a meal, or anything else other than a sleeping bag that you might typically equate with camping.
Thursday:
Starting in Portland and heading east means driving out the Columbia Gorge. We decided to go along the north side so that we could put the ‘forest road’ plan into effect. The south side is all cliff face so you pretty much have to take the one road, which is Interstate-84. We wanted something more rural.
Somewhere between Portland and the bridge at Biggs Junction we headed up into the hills and onto a series of logging roads. There wasn’t much to see other than the remains of clear cuts. And we agreed that these were the worst roads in terms of driving quality we’ve ever been on. As it turned out, we ended up at a dead end and had to turn back.
So our first attempt wasn’t too exciting. But somewhere farther down the road, we came across a turnoff for a waterfall. I don’t remember the name. I do remember it took climbing up a cliff wall to get to it. Which was a little bit exciting. Well, cliff wall might be a bit dramatic. But it was 8-10 feet high and took a bit of channeling Spiderman to get up it.
We discovered a bit of a crowd at the top. Apparently this was a pretty popular swimming spot. The cool thing about the waterfall was there was a shallow pool at the bottom and a bit of a hollow behind it. So you could wade in, walk through the waterfall and stand behind it. Which of course we did. One thing we discovered in the process though, is what looks like a gentle ‘shower-like spray’ isn’t so much when it hits you. A good volume of water falling from a reasonable height is more like a fire hose than a shower. It’s kind of an ooomph moment. When Les got behind the waterfall he announced “I’m not coming out”.
We declared the waterfall a success and headed back up the road. But at about the time we hit The Dalles, the overdrive on the Volvo failed. We ended up having to drive back to Portland to get it fixed, which somehow we managed to do fairly quickly because we then headed back out to The Dalles without really missing a beat. Neither one of us can remember where we spent the night that night but the best guess is at a motel in The Dalles.
Friday:
After a stop at Stonehenge, a replica of the actual Stonehenge, built by the rich but slightly crazy Sam Hill, we headed into the interior of Oregon, driving south down OR 97. It’s fairly unpopulated. We wandered through a series of small towns, stopping in to peruse the antique store in Grass Valley. The scenery was pleasant but not much to see. Rolling hills and farmland.
We went through Antelope, which was memorable at the time as being the center of the Rajneeshees, a religious group/cult led by the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, that had tried to establish a commune near there. It was quite the story for a number of years. Antelope, with its population of about 50 went up against a group numbering in the thousands and with the help of the state, ultimately forced them to leave. Legitimate concern about illegal activities and goings on or religious intolerance, you decide. But I do recall it was quite the spectacle at the time. I’m pretty sure they were gone by the time we went through although the timeline in the Wikipedia entry suggests otherwise.
We headed east from Antelope and just before Clarno, we reached the John Day river, which happened to have a nice looking swimming spot just off the road. So we paused and had a swim. The water was like glass. Totally calm. Although there was enough of a current that it took some effort to swim against it. At least for me. I’m not the world’s strongest swimmer.
Just past the river we came upon the Clarno unit of the John Day Fossil Beds. But we didn’t know it at the time. We saw a very cool looking rock formation with a steep but climbable hill leading up to it and decided to climb up and have a look. The view was quite good and we discovered some small caves that we explored.
But the most remarkable discovery was a good sized porcupine. I had never seen one in the wild (or at all in real life I think at that point). There wasn’t a whole lot to see actually. He wasn’t particularly keen on us being around and had taken up a defensive position by getting up against the rock so the only parts reachable were long and pointy. We weren’t planning to mess with him so he could have relaxed. It made it hard to get a good look at him. We wished him well and headed on our way.
About 100 yards up the road we reached the parking lot and the signage that told us we had been wandering around the John Day fossil beds. The Clarno Unit being one of 3 fossil beds in that part of Oregon. We had seen no fossils. But apparently there are many to be found around there.
Somewhere along the way east (my guess is around Fossil) we left the paved road and got onto forest service roads headed to Ukiah. This took us through the Umatilla National Forest. But for a good chunk of it, it looked like the Umatilla National dead sticks. The forest did not look healthy. Kind of like a mangy dog.
We found a campsite, somewhere out that way, near dusk. At this point in our careers we did not yet have a tent and so, slept in the back of the Volvo. A bit cramped and stuffy, but workable. The campsite was on top of a hill where we had a good view of a very pretty sunset that night. We had the traditional car-campers dinner of beer and hotdogs over the campfire.
Saturday:
We didn’t have much in the way of supplies either so breakfast was also hot dogs (although we skipped the beer) and we headed out onto the gravel roads once more. We continued through the Umatilla National stick farm, past Anthony Lakes and on to North Powder. I only know this because I wrote some short notes when we got back that I recently discovered. I have no recollection of it.
From there it was on to Halfway, Oregon which is not, as you might imagine from the name, halfway across Oregon. It is, in fact (thanks Google), halfway between Pine and Cornucopia. Two thriving metropolises that apparently generate a lot of traffic between them. Either that or someone on the Halfway naming committee had a touch of whimsy about them. It gives you some idea of how populated this area of Oregon is. I had to use Google maps just to find Pine and Cornucopia, and near as I can tell, Halfway, at population < 400 is the biggest of the 3.
Anyway, from there we headed up to the Oxbow Dam on the Snake River, which creates the border with Idaho. We got onto a dirt road that ran along the river at the bottom of a steep valley – the beginnings of Hells Canyon, a scenic area. We intended to follow the river for a while but shortly thereafter, hit a dead end. That was disappointing.
As we headed back, we noticed a truck coming down the cliff face on a little dirt road. Les stopped them (a couple of good ‘ol boys) and asked them about it. “It’s the old power line road”, they said. “What’s it like?”, Les asked. ” Well, it gets a little steep up there”, they responded in what would turn out to be one of the larger understatements of the trip. Les said, “Not many Volvos go this way I’d bet”. They agreed, but did not dissuade us.
To give you some sense of this “road”, it was a goat path, barely wide enough for one car, that ran steeply up the side of the valley. Les had to run the Volvo in first gear to get enough oomph to even ascend. There was no way to turn around and stopping would have been a bad idea anyway because I doubt we could have gotten enough inertia going to start back up. (Down would not have been a problem, but backing down the hill was not an option)
We zigzagged our way to the top, where any real semblance of road just stopped and we were free to drive around the top of the mountain on anything that looked relatively flat and devoid of rocks or trees. We very quickly lost track of where the road was that took us up. And actually we were looking to come down the other side anyway. But we couldn’t find any way out. At one point I’m pretty sure we were driving down a creek bed. “Worst road we’ve ever been on for sure”, we commented.
At the point we were starting to think we might be sleeping up there, we made a fateful left turn and suddenly were on something that looked more like a road again and shortly thereafter we emerged into the back end of a fish weir parking lot.
We parked and got out to take a look. One of the workers, a crusty old gent, seemed kind of surprised to see us emerge from the hillside like that (especially considering there was a perfectly good road in from the other side). We told him how we had gotten there and he said “Gee, I’m sorry you took that road”. Which was an interesting way to put it.
We left the fish weir and headed toward Imnaha. I’m not sure why, but probably because it was the only named location anywhere near where we were. When we got there, we discovered the road to Hat Point, a lookout point overlooking Hells Canyon. That sounded cool so up we went. This road was wide enough for two cars but not a whole lot less scary than the power line road. It wound its way up to the top of the mountains. The view from the top was quite amazing, looking down on the Snake River and across to a series of peaks on the other side.
It’s about the only view of Hells Canyon you can get, at least from the Oregon side. It would be fun to take a boat through, assuming you can. Very pretty, especially in the afternoon light.
It was getting late and time to find a place to sleep. We headed to Joseph where we discovered, much to our dismay, that all the hotels were full. But it was a little place and we weren’t alarmed at this point. We proceeded through another 5 or 6 podunk towns on the road to Le Grande and they were all full too. Uh oh. Le Grande? No dice. Baker City? Sorry, no. 100 miles of “unpopulated” Oregon and no hotel rooms. What gives?
Well, it turns out Cycle Oregon had stopped in the area for the night. Cycle Oregon is a yearly event where some large number (thousands?) of bike riders ride across Oregon on some pre-determined route. This year, and on this day, they were right where we were and they and all their support teams and hangers-on had booked up every room in a 50 mile radius.
We were out of ideas and it was getting late. We ended up parking the car at a rest stop and sleeping in the back. Not my idea of a good time, and probably not something I’d do again these days. But it’s not like we hadn’t slept in the car the night before and there were convenient restroom facilities. So it could have been worse. And we weren’t robbed and killed, or worse, so all in all, it worked out just fine.
Sunday:
Sunday and time to head towards home. It was now day 3 with no shower after spending two nights in a stuffy Volvo. So we were getting a bit gamey. We realized were weren’t going to make it back in time if we took the forest route and plus we hadn’t found the forest route all that interesting. So we took the easy drive back on Highway 26.
And as it turned out, the forest was much nicer looking off the highway than it was on the logging roads. The highway follows the John Day River. We came to the junction of Highway 19, where 26 continued west but the river veered north. We had also entered the Sheep Rock unit of the John Day Fossil Beds. The second of the three sites. I believe it was at this point that we realized there was more than one and so of course we had to go see the third one too. Luckily by taking a fairly broad detour, we could see both and end up back on 26.
There wasn’t a whole lot to see at the Sheep Rock version of the fossil beds. There’s one picture so we must have gotten out of the car. I remember that the rock formations were kind of cool looking.
About half way around the detour loop is the little (pop 160) town of Spray. It has a nice riverside park on the John Day River and we stopped there to eat lunch. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful spot and we remarked, using a slogan from the Old Milwaukee beer ad at the time, that “it doesn’t get any better than this”. But, we agreed, as the ad suggested, that the Swedish Bikini team might have made it better than this.
The fact that they didn’t show up did not dampen our spirits and after lunch we continued on to the third John Day Fossil Bed, the Painted Hills. The Painted Hills are ‘painted’ by layers of colored rock. They were quite interesting to look at and if we’d had time, would have been nice to hike around. But home beckoned and we continued on back to Hwy 26
We came back into ‘civilization’ at Prineville and turned south towards Bend so that we could take the McKenzie Pass highway over the mountains. I’m sure at this point in my life I didn’t know about this road so my guess is it was Les’ idea. Regardless it’s a very nice twisty road through the Cascades between Bend and Eugene. And one of its prime features is the lava beds
The Cascades are all volcanic and over the millennia have spewed lava all over western Oregon and Washington (Mount St. Helens being the most recent example). The lava beds really give you a sense for the scope of these eruptions. They cover a wide area and clearly took out anything and everything in their path. ‘The awesome power of nature’ is something of a cliché but wandering around the lava beds you realize they’re not kidding. As the movie Dante’s Peak has shown us, you do not want to be around when these things go off (unless you have Pierce Brosnan to protect you, and it probably helps to be female and attractive).
The lava beds were the last attraction. From there, we headed to Eugene, took a right and headed up I-5 to home. Once again proving that you can cover a lot of ground and see a lot of things in a relatively short period of time. Although as it would turn out, the next trip covered even more.
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