We took my son and his things to college in September. He is going to Oregon State University to study business. We took the back road route. We drove from Las Vegas to Reno the first day, stopping so that Paul could visit his best friend, who had just started at the University of Nevada at Reno. We then took US395 up to Susanville and through to I5 just south of Mt. Shasta. It was great to be back in the Sierras again, even if we did encounter a little road work around Westwood. It is nice to get out of the desert and into an area where green is not an alien color. We continued on I5 north, where Paul had a blowout (not really; the tread came off of the tire but the tire remained inflated) near Ashland. He controlled the car beautifully. That made it so that we got into Corvallis late.
We got Paul situated in his dormitory room and had lunch with his roommate's family. Jason is majoring in business as well and his father is an executive at the Hewlett Packard plant in Corvallis. We got to see a good deal of corvallis in the two days we were there, but Paul will have more to show after he has been there a while.
We took US20 east out of Corvallis to the Cascades. I had driven the route on Oregon Route 242 before. In reality, the Oregon route is prettier and more varied, even though there were mountainous roads and a lot of greenery (firs, brush, etc.) on this route. You miss the volcanic fields that 242 crosses. This route brought us into Sisters. We decided to cancel our motel in Bend and to get a room in Sisters, a much smaller town. But a popular one. The restaurants were crowded, even if the motels were not. Our motel, though, did have llamas in a field in front of it. And when we got up in the morning, the field behind the motel had about a dozen deer browsing. The quisine in sisters was great. We chose a continental restaurant (Sisters Hotel restaurant) over a French, an Italian and a barbecue place. We walked the food off (we wish) afterwards window shopping on the main street. There were antique shops, art shops (including Native American crafts) and your general tourist souvenir shops. The town is quite nice and serves as a base for a lot of outdoor activities.
We continued on to Bend the next day. This is the real hub of the area. It and the towns around it contain about 100,000 people. The major reason for being there is to engage in the outdoor activities. Sunner activities include hiking, rafting, tubing, canoeing, backpacking and rock climbing. Winter activities include skiing (all kinds), snowshoeing and snowmobiling. The one place you do not want to leave town without visiting is the High Desert Museum. This is one of the surprising museums like the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. The museum presents the areas geology, history and natural history in a very entertaining as well as instructive manner. It is one of the better museums in the country for this kind of presentation. We spent the entire morning there, wishing that we had more time. Indeed, Bend deserves a 2 week vacation by itself. You would still not exhaust the possibilities in that time frame.
The next leg of our journey took us back into the desert. The Great Basin starts effectively about 30 miles east of Bend. This is the high desert; the ground is covered more with dried grasses and sage brush than the creosote bush found near Las Vegas. Burns (along with its sister town, Hinds) is a virtual outpost in the desert. There is nothing south until you come to Winnemucca. Bend is 125 miles west. There are similar sized towns north and east, but there is virtually nothing until Boise or Spokane. While the area is relatively rough and primitive, we did find a good Italian restaurant. I hope that the locals support it enough for it to survive. The reason for staying in Burns (aside from the fact that there is nowhere else to stay) is that the Malheur Lake Wildlife Refuge and Steens Mountain Wilderness areas are just south.
We left bright and early on a chilly morning for Mahleur Lake. The lake was really, in the fall, more a series of pools. The water was getting low. There was a kingfisher stationed about every quarter mile on a telephone pole. They seemed happy and fat. Because we did not have a lot of time, we continued on to the road for Steens Mountain. The peak, which you can drive to, is at nearly 10,000 feet. You can look over the peak to the Alvord Desert, one mile below. This is as steep a drop as the Grand Canyon. The first thing we saw along the road was a herd of pronghorn, browsing the dried grasses. They were camera shy. As we rose, we got into the elevation where the predominant cover was aspen. They were just beginning to turn yellow. The contrast of different greens and the yellow was amazing. But that is about the last thing we saw. Near Fish Lake we entered the clouds. We drove on to the peak. We stopped at three different viewpoints and saw only a white void in front of us. The area above the tree line was grassy again, with very red soil. On our descent we saw a herd of deer and heard a grouse. We began to see views as we descended. The Little Blitzen River Gorge is a perfectly sculpted glacial valley. Clearly, it is U shaped. Bright green and red lichen grew on the rocks there. The road got bumpy before we left the valley, crossing the Donder und Blitzen River. We will return again for the view.
The rest of the trip was pretty straight forward. We passed through Denio and Denio Junction. The junction is for sale. You can buy the store and the bar/restaurant. That was really the major sign of habitation before Winnemucca; there was only an occasional ranch house after that. We stayed the night in Winnemucca, eating at an elegant Basque restaurant. It was quite good and was authentic. After that, we drove through Austin and Tonopah on the way home. The major thing to comment about on the way, aside from the Toiyabe Range, was how the town of Round Mountain has been displaced. The gold mine dumps tailings where most of the town used to be. Most people now live in Hadley or Carvers.
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