It was my idea, after the kitten rescue and the leaving again, to show David Foster Flat Road, a gravel road leading west from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, almost chiefly because of its monotony. Get over the ridge, see, I urged, and you can see forever and forever of the same.

I had driven several miles down Foster Flat Road a couple of years ago, when I was in the area alone. I finally lost my nerve because of the nothingness and the sharpness of the rocks, which led me to worry about getting a flat tire.

David drove in and within a mile we had a flat tire.

This evolved into limping into Burns, Ore., on our doughnut, finding a Les Schwab* and hanging out in Burns for the day while they shipped us our tires from Ontario, Ore.

Tags: burns, flat tire, oregon

Dinner was PB&J David smeared together using the hood of the ‘bru as a table at deepest dusk in Long Hollow. Long Hollow, an east-west passway through to the Alvord–the eastern, desert side of the Steens–in the narrow notch between Steens and Pueblo Mountains, takes all of the loneliness of the Alvord, all the vastness of the Catlow Valley, and channels between them. It is a haunting place.

We stood there and ate and bats flew near us. We heard: a horned owl hoot-hooing, distant coyotes lamenting.

Driving again, it took both of us the entirety of our efforts to scan the road. Wildlife, everywhere. Eyes glowing on the side of the road.

David drove over a stick in the road.

“Oh, crap! I think that was a snake!” he yelled, when the report of the wheels was soft rather than hard.

Half a mile on there was another stick in the road, so we stopped and backed up and pointed our headlights at it.

It was a sinuous, handsome snake, lethargic, absorbing the heat of the day out of the blacktop of the road. Slender, tawny, with complex black markings. We looked at it for a bit and then felt very bad about the snake we’d ended. Poor snake. It stuck with me.

Tags: catlow, oregon, snake

I have long ignored the dirt road leading off up and west from Alvord Hot Springs, heading up the steep, steep eastern ascent of Steens Mountain. I assumed it went nowhere; most of the little spurs don’t around there. On crowded days in the Alvord, this is where people camp (by “crowded” I mean: when there are upwards of five people within ten miles). I have a thing for Pike Creek, anyway, which is another couple of miles north.

But this time Mr. Pencil and I turned onto the road that leads up the Indian Creek drainage. And, as it turns out, the only “crowded” weekend in the Steens is Memorial Day weekend anyway. So, empty.

And, lo, the road went and went and went. We forded Indian Creek and continued. I got out and spotted while David steered the ‘bru over potential high-center obstacles. He straddled ruts and small boulders.

Ultimately, we realized it was just as fast to walk, so we hiked a while up and up along the track. We discovered an extraordinarily eerie abandoned cabin (”I think I found Jacob’s cabin,” said David–it was that kind of decrepitude, and then some) and the remnants of a mine. The views, it’s probably extraneous to mention, were exceptional.

We could hear sage grouse carrying on in the near distance, and things were in bloom: lupine, paintbrush, fresh sage leaves.

Tags: alvord, indian creek, oregon, steens

One dusty day about two years ago, I, solo, in the Catlow Valley, after suffering misdirected starts and inaccurate maps, found the ghost town of Blitzen, Ore.

You can see photos from that endeavor here.

This time I brought David. This time at sundown. This time someone had graded the mud-rutted road enough that it was passable and didn’t require a mile-long hike to reach the scattered, dying buildings.

Blitzen was a prosperous enough town in the early 20th century. Homesteaders came optimistic of the farming potential of the valley, disregarding ghosty thoughts of droughts and isolation. It built: a hotel, a store, a school, post office, families. Then dryness hit the region and harvests failed. Folks packed up. The highway got relocated to the west, along Catlow Rim. A standard story. The store was the last to falter and it closed its doors sometime around 1942.

Now Blitzen–a town named after lightning–is dying into the sage plains. It’s tough to find–you cannot really make it out from the highway, and it may well be on Roaring Springs Ranch land; the no trespassing signs are ambiguous–and far, far from anything safe or settled.

In the past couple of years since I first found it, another of the few standing structures collapsed. The hotel is tilting, tilting. A pair of enormous ravens live in an enormous nest in its upper floor.

(The hotel).

(Detail of the hotel).

Tags: blitzen, catlow, ghost town, oregon

Lakeview, Ore., named for its vantage over “formerly larger” Goose Lake (now shorelined some 15 miles from the town), is the county seat of the eponymous Lake County in south central Oregon.

With about 2700 folks, it’s a veritable bustling metropolis, when considered against the vastness of Lake County–fully a third of the county’s population lives within town limits. Heck, Wikipedia even goes so far as to claim Lake County has a population density of zero people per square mile, which, though romantic and apparently apropos when dashing around the emptier parts of the hinterlands, isn’t exactly accurate (it’s more like .88 person per square mile).

New Jersey, which is roughly the same size, packs 8.4 million people. So there you go. And I haven’t even started on Harney County.

Here’s what I can tell you about Lakeview after my first visit there, ever.

1. Lakeview claims to be the “Tallest Town in Oregon” which turns out to obscure its slightly more complex technical claim, which is that it has the highest elevation of any incorporated town in Oregon with year-round residents. Phew. Coincidentally there was an article in The Oregonian today about Greenhorn, a town in northeastern Oregon that clocks in at 6300 feet (compare Lakeview’s measly 4800-ish). Not my war to fight.
2. Literature about Lakeview boasts very friendly people. But really, what town doesn’t have a chamber of commerce that boasts of its friendly people? Yet Lakeview was alive with old-timers in Stetsons and happy-eyed teenager and every single one of them was astoundingly courteous. With cheer. There must be something in the water.
3. Lakeview has Oregon’s only “active geyser.” In 1923, a fella called Hunter was starting work on a therapeutic hot springs resort a few miles north of the town. Guess what happens if you drill through rock that overlays a fairly sizable hot spring? Such a hole might just provide the only escape the pressurized hot water has. Zoinks! And thus Lakeview ended up with a “geyser.” Information about Old Perpetual (no, I am serious) claims it erupts every few minutes, but in our experience, it was more like every thirty seconds.
4. Lakeview has a welcoming, tidy and comforting downtown. Despite the fact that pretty much the entire business district burned down in 1900, there is still a quiet, historical feel to things. Recommended.

Watch the video:

Tags: oregon, steens, Travel