Travel – Page 10

February 21, 2021February 20, 2021

This way or that way

Every road trip starts pretty much the same way.

A lunch gets packed, extra clothing layers are added to a tote, water bottles along with coffee/tea tumblers are filled. Then gear and dog get loaded into the Subaru and we’re off. In winter this is often right at first light giving us the whole day to explore.

Sometimes you have a specific destination in mind, but even when that is the case, the route taken can be altered. The longer you travel an area the more often you find yourself on the back roads. Two lane county roads pass through better landscapes with a lot less hassle from other traffic.

Morning skies are a stunning mix of clouds and azure blue. We head north, then veer east towards Smith Rock. As luck would have it we arrive in time to see the sun light up the rock face.

We have a rule we hold to on nearly every road trip.

Don’t return on the same route. This is a bit more difficult, though not impossible in the mountains. When you’re traveling the high desert there are almost too many routes to choose from.

This road looks promising. Loaded with supplies of coffee, donuts, and gas, we follow this route for awhile, then eventually pull out the map to get our bearings.

This post initially started as a conversation about how it seemed all roads lead to the Crooked River. This is only partially true.

What is true … with the aid of good maps you can find alternate routes to treasured destinations from nearly anywhere. And the beauty of these alternate routes is finding totally new places to explore in and around favorite spots.

February 14, 2021February 13, 2021

Painted Hills Pictures

Painted Hills Overlook features a panoramic view of the hills. The trail is accessible year-round, but can be icy in the winter.

The otherworldly nature of the Painted Hills is why we keep coming back to this unit of the John Day Fossil Beds. The guidebooks suggest spring or fall as good times to visit. This just means that those are the seasons with the most visitors at the monument.

Mitchell, the closest town, is a two hour drive through the Ochoco National Forest. There are three units that make up the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

Painted Hills is at the southwest corner of the complex. An hour and a half north is the Clarno Unit or 45 minutes East is the Sheep Rock Unit. These three sites offer a great look at the paleontological riches of Oregon and as you can imagine the drive between sites is rich in geological marvels.

The Clarno Unit offers the oldest exposed layers and fossil encrusted rocks while at the Sheep Rock unit you can tour the Thomas Condon Center and view fragments of ancient animals under glass.

However, the Painted Hills Unit presents a much larger canvas where stratified layers of soil show off eons of earth history in a very colorful manner.

We make seasonal trips to Painted Hills and find that the colored layers are more pronounced in the winter and spring.

In the spring we plan to try hiking the Blue Basin Loop, at the northern edge of the Sheep Rock Unit, and take in a somewhat different ancient landscape.

February 7, 2021February 6, 2021

Back roads and weathered wood

I guess we were feeling restless and in need of a real road trip. Winter snows have yet to arrive so we headed north on Highway 97.

At the Northern end of our loop, I-84 and The Dalles Bridge

The idea was to follow this major arterial to the Columbia River Gorge and then wander backroads south along the east side of the Cascades – the more desolate the better.

The photographic target for this journey … abandoned buildings and weathered wood.

With no set destination our wandering led us to the discovery of the day … an old Catholic Cemetery with headstones dating back to the mid – 1800s.

The settling and re-settling of rural Oregon is most evident along the small state routes. Roads connect names on a map where the main structure of commerce is a grain elevator.

Once you climb out of the gorge there’s an expanse of furrowed fields with sprouts of winter wheat in perfect rows. These rolling hills of grain fields get broken by gashes cut in by seasonal creek beds. The road follows nature’s contours with minimal engineering.

This area offers a beautiful canvas for some wonderful cloud scapes.

There are trip planners on the Internet leading to ghost towns. In Oregon, agriculture and mining are featured as the driving forces in the creation of these markers to progress and shifts in the state’s economy. A large number of these spots are in Central Oregon.

Dufer, 20 minutes south of The Dalles, was once at the heart of an apple growing mecca.

Our research suggested this as a good area for photographic explorations. Aging wooden structures holding granaries and mills, as well as rural schools dot the area.

We toured roads named for mills, markets and local farms, as well as the slightly racist “Japanese Hollow” where we found an abandoned schoolhouse in a cow pasture.

Turning up fifteen mile road, which is more like sixteen miles up OR 197 from it’s junction with I-84, we were treated to postcard views of Mt Hood. The focus of this leg was to locate the old general store in the town of Friend. Unfortunately, it was closed to outsiders. I guess there was no friendliness to be found in Friend.

We climbed up the lower eastern foothills of the Cascades and onto the Warm Springs Reservation. Here we caught more great snow capped images and a well weathered stock corral before dropping back down into the Deschutes River gorge and reconnecting with Highway 97 and the trip home.

Heading west on OR 216 out of Maupin toward Walter’s Corner

January 31, 2021January 31, 2021

Morning at Smith Rock

We arrived before dawn and pretty much had the place to ourselves. Despite the low light conditions, we easily navigated the trails.

Central Oregon winters can deliver deep snow and sub-freezing temps … but there are also periods of nearly spring-like conditions. On one of those snowless days we headed off for Terrabonne and a hike at Smith Rock State Park.

The park and it’s web of trails center around a canyon with shear rock faces lining the north bank of the Crooked River. Most people come here to climb those rocks and on weekends the parking lot is literally filled to capacity.

Arrive on a weekday morning, especially in the winter, and you might have the park to yourself. We’re here because the gnarled juniper trees and rock outcroppings make for interesting landscape photos.

There was no dramatic sunrise. That said, we scouted the area for future shoots. This is a destination (much like Painted Hills) that we will definitely visit again.

However, we chose a more moderate route. By following the south rim of the Crooked River Canyon we were treated to great views, excellent photo ops and an easy hike.

December 13, 2020December 13, 2020

Glad It’s over … nearly

This is the 60th time this year we’ve shared our week.

The blog serves as a reference point in our lives. What we did last week gets translated into words, images, and an occasional video.

Smoke from Oregon’s forest fires inundated the area making it impossible to do anything outside.

As the year comes to a close it would be easy to focus on the dumpster fire that was 2020 … maybe naively think 2021 is going to be any better.

But a blog allows us a look back at directions we took and points we hit.

Last January started with a typical Central Oregon mid-winter thaw. This presented an opportunity to explore where just a few weeks before the roads were snowed in and would be again the following week.

By April we were in the clutches of “first wave” quarantine and social distancing. We discovered that fewer people working meant crowds in the forests and on river banks. Thus we had to look for alternatives.

Time was blocked out visiting via Zoom, experimenting with recipes and creating new rituals. Cocktail hour became a new favorite. We spent time sipping and testing different whiskeys.

As Spring shifted into summer we discovered new spots to spend a day. Explorations of different roads around Summer Lake, Fort Rock and the high desert forested edges occupied our day trips.