Tag: Road Trip

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Pick a spot, any spot

Columbia Gorge, from an overlook near Mosier, Oregon

This week’s travels were more of a route than destination. Typically, we pick a location, then plan a route. Occasionally, we pick a direction and stop whenever and wherever we feel like it. This was one of those trips.

We begin our trek heading north. We have a vague idea of “cherries are in season now” and realize … “it’s been awhile since we saw the Columbia River Gorge.”

As mentioned in previous posts (see “Fossils, Rocks and Turkeys”), there are rules we apply to every road trip. In this case, “don’t repeat route wherever possible.”

With cherries in mind, we head to Hood River’s Fruit Loop. We wind our way past orchards, then stop at Pearl’s Place Fruit Stand, one of our favorites. The owners are nice, the fruit, in this case cherries and fresh peaches, are delicious.

We notice traffic is really picking up on the Loop. We shift to a new route away from the tourists and toward the little town of Mosier in the gorge.

A few years ago, we picked end-of-season apricots from trees on Annie’s Orchard, which is located here. After all, cherries are in season and we are in prime orchard country.

Rainier cherries

We are ahead of the hottest part of the day as we exit I-84 into Mosier.

A fruit stand, manned by community volunteers and stocked from nearby Roots Farm, has several varieties to choose from.

We pick up a few pounds of Rainers, setting aside a small bag for front-seat snacking. And we are back on our way.

Instead of the freeway, we go east on Second Street, out of town, which is a stretch of the old Columbia River Highway, US-30.

This section is still in service, featuring lots of driveways, wineries, orchards, and scenic overlooks. We follow the narrow, twisty road, watching out for groups of bikers, and enjoy stellar views of the gorge.

Then, we are back on the freeway. This time we turn south towards home, taking an alternate route through landscape that morphs from grain fields into ranch country. Visible from the car are rolling hills with an abundance of sage. After a full day on the road, it is good to be home.

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Head Waters

Headwaters of the Crooked River

The Crooked River has been the subject of many posts on this blog, usually centered on fishing. This week, with a welcome break in poor air quality, we headed to the headwaters of our favorite stream.

Forests of Ponderosa Pine mixed with open prairie

The Ococho National forest lands sit between the saged high desert and the thickly forested cascade range.

A half hours drive east of Prineville puts you on the edge of Big Summit Prairie and a web of fresh water springs feeding into the North Fork of the Crooked River.

As the name implies this stream meanders across central Oregon, most of it through hay and pasture land.

Tip finds a nice spot of shade
Lunch at Deep Creek

The canyon we frequent most is some 50 or 60 miles downstream of  Deep Creek Campground.

We’ve pulled in here for a bit of lunch and a cup of coffee. The air is clean, filled with the scent of Ponderosa and it feels like Fall.

 

Deep Creek feeds into the North Fork as it turns south, away from the road and through a forested canyon and wilderness study area. The only way to fish that stretch is by trail and today we’re not prepared for that journey.

Eagle Rock, a popular site for rock enthusiasts, and a visit for another day.

We follow USFS 42 over yet another low mountain range heading south and west. The pine forest gives way to ancient juniper and volcanic rock fields. At the junction with OR 380 we are surrounded by cattle ranches and the North Fork merges into the Crooked. It stays in this grassy valley for 30 miles before winding south into the Prineville reservoir. After which it will exit Bowman dam and wind through the basalt lined canyon we frequent.

We skirt the eastern edge of the reservoir, through Prineville and after a brief stop for chocolate soft-serve at the local DQ, head home. It was very nice to be out of the smoke and haze for a day.

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Annual Fruit Stand Trip

Catching the end of peach season

This week we headed up to Hood River and a trip through the Fruit Loop. It is a bit earlier than normal, but a great break from the smoky air that plagues Central Oregon.

The drive is an annual trek and usually focuses on Kiyokawa’s orchard, a favorite stand. The difference is this year we are early by nearly a month and thus the selection is different. We’re looking for peaches and plums with thoughts of preserving a few, and of course making Pflaumenkuchen.

Bartlett pears, red and yellow, are part of the early season harvest on the Fruit Loop.

The apple season is just starting so where normally there would be tens of varieties, this day there was maybe half a dozen to choose from. There was also a selection of pears, as they are in season as well.  On the other hand, peaches are end of season, but we found some Veterans which we’ll preserve a couple of quarts to keep the pantry up to date.

The drawback to Kiyokawa is they only sell in bulk. The pandemic has curtailed open bins with tasting trays for each variety and now you buy by the pound.

We stopped at a new stand, Pearls Place. There you can pick up individual pieces, as well as boxed or bagged fruit. 

Pearl’s had a great variety of stone fruit and in that mix were Italian Prune Plums, which were at the top of our list.

It worked out well to hit the  orchards at a different point in the season and we are enjoying the peaches as much as the apples and pears. The trip home was through Maupin with lunch on the Deschutes River. It was a great end to a nicely smoke-free day.

Gorgeous day on the Deschutes River
Lunch started with freshly sliced peaches, a perfect ending to a great day.

 

 

 

 

 

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Desert color

A field of arrow-leaf balsamroot in the John Day Basin

As the winter snows recede our weekly explorations take us to more distant places. The high desert, typically painted in dusty tones, is a deep green hue. Sage and desert grasses are taking advantage of the available water with a spring growth spurt. Mixed in this lush carpet are spots of color.

Spring Basin Wilderness home to rare desert wildflowers

Desert blooms are often tiny little flowers that show themselves for a few weeks in the spring. The week’s adventures allowed for the capture of a wide variety of desert fauna.

Yellow daisies line the road as we climb the east face of the Sutton Mountains.
We found desert paintbrush while hiking the Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge
Microseris
Looking at the Warner Valley below you can see the transition from lakes and wetlands, to grasslands and sage steppe. Spring is a great time to explore the greening of Oregon’s high desert.
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Ancient Lake

Crystallized minerals encrust rocks along the lakeshore. This is Lake Abert, a remote saltwater lake in Oregon’s high desert … and it is disappearing.

A recent Oregon Natural Desert Assoc. (ONDA) Zoom lecture made us aware of a spot we’d been near but never by and offered the perfect day trip. This week we headed to Lake Abert.

At the end of the last ice age the melting glaciers created the 460 square mile fresh water Lake Chewaucan. Then over a 2 million year span, the Pleistocene epoch, the water slowly receded and as it dried up alkali and salt deposits were left. Summer lake and Lake Abert, some 20 miles apart are the remnants of that lake. Abert is a relatively shallow endorheic (no outlet) basin that holds a saltwater lake.

We drove the indirect route via the Christmas Valley Highway (County 5-14). Cutting north off OR 31 at Fort Rock and then east to the town of Christmas Valley.

Fort Rock in the distance

The Christmas Valley Highway takes us across a high desert plain of scrub and sage. There are patches of land with hay crops and cattle herds but without irrigation the land is sage brush on high desert sand.

OR 395 skirts the edge of Lake Abert and the Abert Rim. Numerous pull-outs provide a chance to view wildlife. There is no food, gas or lodging nearby.
We didn’t see bighorn sheep, but did spot several bald eagles.

At OR 395 we turn south and head toward Paisley OR. We are on the western edge of a fault scarp that raises to 2500 feet, topped with 800 feet of basalt.

This is the Abert Rim, home to Big Horn sheep (transplants from Hart Mountain) and a national hang gliding competition.

On the other side of OR 395 is the rocky shore of Lake Abert – Oregon’s only saltwater lake.

We hiked down to take a closer look. Lake Abert is the largest saline lake in the Pacific Northwest and one of the most important shorebird habitats in the intermountain west.

Humans have been living here for at least 11,000 years. Archeological surveys have identified more than thirty prehistoric sites some with round stone house pits, domestic artifacts, petroglyphs, and pictographs. there are no signs or markers to identify the historic district.

While some of the house pits and petroglyphs are close to the highway, there are no signs or markers to identify them as a way to protect the fragile sites.

We saw very few shore birds. By the end of this summer Lake Abert will likely be dry.

Abert was once a major stop on the migration of 3.5 million shore birds.

It’s saline waters offered a perfect ecology for brine shrimp and alkali flys, but no fish.

The high concentrations of sodium and alkali can be seen in the mineral crusts coating rocks and boulders on the lake’s shore line. Climate change, extended droughts and battles over Klamath Basin water rights play equal roles in the draining of Oregon’s only salt water lake.