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Getting There and Back
In mid-September, Bea and I decided to go to Eastern Oregon to look over Gordon and Joan's new property (son and daughter-in-law, if you've forgotten). It was some of the same territory that Sheila, Jeffi and I did in June of 2006. But this time we concentrated on the John Day Fossil Beds area. Gordon and Joan's property is conveniently located right in the middle of everything. If you can say that about something that's really in the middle of nowhere.
This travelogue will be mostly about Eastern Oregon, but first a little about the Cascade Mountains and the trip over and back. Bea has a Chalet A-frame pop-up camper on a trailer which is quite light and maneuverable, so we hauled that. If you have electricity to hook up to, you have a fridge, water heater, lights and space heater. The stovetop is propane and the electrical things can run for quite a while off a major battery. So we would not be too uncomfortable no matter what. And it's small enough that you still spend most of your time in the great outdoors and go to bed early. The only major drawback is no shower, which, as you will see later, figured fairly prominently into our schedule.
The McKenzie Pass Scenic Byway, Highway 242, had just re-opened after some repairs, so we took that over the mountains. First, though, we had to ascertain that our overall length was no more than 35' or we wouldn't be able to make the turns and narrow spots. This is the route that goes through the lava fields and has the Dee Wright observatory at its summit. This observatory is built on an 8-mile long lava flow and, in fact, is built entirely from the lava rock. It was built by the CCC in the 1930s and named after the supervisor of that project. This page from Paul Noll and family, apparently traveling Oregonians (no, I don't know them), has some good photos and information. And, I've just discovered wikimapia so here's what they have on the pass.
As you can see, the view from the top is spectacular, when the light is right many mountains appear to be within hiking distance (they're not). To get there, the drive up the west side is pretty hairy; the drive down into Sisters from the summit is an easy 15 miles. If you are driving a big camper or RV you should think about this carefully. The road is narrow and rock cliffs come right to its edge on your right-hand side going up from the west. If you have wide mirrors, you might want to consider traveling from east to west, because there's lots of empty space to your right going down. But there also are no guard rails and some major drops. It's been said that the road is still best-suited to the Model A. That's about right. All in all, I was glad Bea was driving and that we were nowhere close to 35'. The alternative, of course is to take the main road, Highway 126, which is fine for all sizes of vehicles, at least at this time of year.
After cresting the summit, we drove on through Sisters (a kind of cutesy and touristy Western town) and Prineville (less cutesy, further from the ski areas, with the impressive Grant County Court House) and up one more mountain to the Ochoco Summit campground. This is an area of great tranquility (at least after Labor Day) and  mature Ponderosa pines. Although the young trees have dark trunks, as the pine matures it develops a lovely crackled surface of a warm, rusty cinnamon color and the needles are a dark dusty green. It makes for a very attractive forest. 
Finding a mature stand in the area isn't easy, though, most of the old growth in the area was harvested (some say pillaged) roughly from 1910 to 1950 by the Brooks-Scanlon Lumber company out of Minnesota -- three Brooks (brothers?) and one Scanlon. First they cut down most of the trees in Minnesota and then they came to Oregon (and Louisiana, Florida, Montana, British Columbia--anywhere the forests were ripe for the picking). It's odd to drive through high mountain desert with hardly any trees and see a High School reader board cheering on the Loggers. Maybe no odder than the Prospectors (now known mostly as the "Pros"), when there isn't any gold left either. But that, of course, is not so obvious.
Anyway the campground was lovely and peaceful and the pull-through site we found was even enough that we didn't have to unhitch and level the trailer. At 4700 feet, it was mighty chilly at night, but that just inspired us to get on the road early and go to breakfast at a café in Mitchell that Joan and Gordon had recommended.
Breakfast will begin the next installment, but I also want to tell you a little about the trip back across the mountains, so as to concentrate on Eastern, not Central, Oregon for the rest of this travelogue. We came back across the Cascades via the main route, Highway 126 and stayed at the Trail Bridge Reservoir Campground at Carmen Smith dam. This is a hybrid campground, the property is owned by the Eugene Water and Electric Board, but maintained by the US Forest Service. There's no water or electricity, but they have an outhouse, fire pits and garbage bins. When looking at the "lake", you have to sort of squint to screen out the dam and the electrical uptakes, but again, it was pretty and tranquil.  And this time damned cold (as opposed to mighty chilly) at night. At an elevation of about 2500' it should have been fine, but Fall has arrived in Oregon. Mostly we tried to stay warm as we soothed the Steller's jays, who thought they should have been rid of humans by now and scolded us unmercifully for at least 45 minutes in the evening and again in the morning*. Indeed, most campgrounds in the state close at the end of Labor Day weekend. But a few stay open later, this year to October 8, and we were in one of them. Perfectly legitimate, we paid our fee and everything. The jays were not impressed.
We also had plenty of swallows and fish to admire as they swooped or leaped over or out of the water of the reservoir for dinner and breakfast. At breakfast, while we were trying to warm up over a pretty paltry campfire (all wood scavenged from nearby fire pits), we were approached by a young man with a clipboard. This was a federal survey, he said. A five-year study to help the Forest Service allocate funds. Seems reasonable on the surface, but, on reflection, not so good. Such an undertaking probably means that the less popular places will get less money, open later and close earlier, even if they're not subject to outright closure. So, those of us in the mood to camp a little rough--to avoid the RVers who are more concerned about comfort, television and internet connections than nature--will be out-of-luck. Wilderness shared with hundreds is not very wild. We can only hope that the change in administration and Congressional majorities will make a difference. I'm not really optimistic. For this year, though, it was a peaceful and nearly solitary end to our trip. We answered all the survey questions very carefully ( How many days on this trip? How much money have you spent? How many National Forests have you visited in the last year? Etc.) and hope for the best.
Next installment, how it is in Eastern Oregon and what Joan and Gordon's place is like.
* Steller's are the ones with the topknot. When I looked on the web to see if there was anything really interesting about them, I learned that they don't appear in the Great Basin. So that's why we saw none on the rest of our trip.
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