Trod Bogs Sadly – Oddstray's Blog

Like the hart mountain national antelope refuge. And almost everywhere we’ve been this trip.

It makes for a dusty vehicle – one wonders whether using the windshield wipers will grind a pattern into the glass because dust – but also for views like this:

coming down from Hart mountain

Well, there it is, north of Christmas Valley, OR (it wasn’t Christmas, and this isn’t a valley!), down a 7 mile long dirt road with the worst washboard ever experienced, a 2 mile long fissure in the ground. B sez it’s a fault line, but I marveled about how much force would be required  to break this rock.

There was water erosion, too. Very pretty.

Check it out for yourselves at Google Maps

This little lady just walked into the RV park, had a nice meal, ambled between the RV’s, and just walked on out again.

In the RV park here at Junipers, there are many bird boxes, pretty much one for every couple of RV sites. Many of them are occupied by swallows, which are pretty entertaining birds, wheeling and gliding and dive-bombing.

The one next to the ‘office’ is occupied by some blue-hued bird, whose behavior is very like the swallows, but whose plumage is much prettier.

Today we took the park truck, an ancient Chevy S100, for a drive to Lower Cottonwood Lake, which is actually a big reservoir in the middle of nowhere. No wonder they named it Lake County.

Tonight we ate a fresh trout, caught by our co-camp hosts, right here in Junipers reservoir. Yummee, indeed.

Yesterday, we toddled off to have a look at the Abert Rim, an up to 2,000 foot cliff that runs for many miles, just north of here on US 395.

Well, there it is. You can get some idea of scale from the tiny farmhouse nestled way up close to the base of the rim.

Today, we tried to find the intersection of California, Oregon and Nevada.

We went south on 395 from Lakeview, dropped by the Goose Lake Oregon State campground to take a look, then went south and missed the turning to Fort Bidwell. Back-tracking, we got on it.

After a few serene miles the road turned gravel, and kicking up some dust, we found the ‘Fandango Pass’, which led us to a precipitous, switchbacky, way down to the dry lake on the Eastern side of the Warner Mountain range.

Heading north from there to Fort Bidwell, we wondered how anyone around here buys their groceries, it’s so far from anywhere.

Heading North East, after miles and miles of gravel roads (Modoc County Roads 5 and 1), we hit the border of CA and OR:

At this point, we tried putting in the location of the 3 state junction of CA, OR and NV to the GPS. Yep, it said, you can go down this farm track to get to the ‘3 corners’ point on someone’s private land about a mile east from where we were,

Good judgement prevailed.

So, then we headed north on the gravel road, to hit asphalt about 10 miles later to the small town of Adel, then west on OR 140, following Deep Creek for some miles to encounter the Deep Creek Falls

Special Day 🙂

Well, it’s certainly not Old Faithful, but it’s kind of cute, a mile or so north of Lakeview. Every 90 seconds.

Last night we had 3 welcome guests who were born in Mexico – Victor (good pal of ours), and his pals from Med school, Arturo and Homero. 2 general surgeons and a neurosurgeon – a good time to get ill!

They arrived on their motorcycles, we fed and housed them for a night and then they were on their way south:

So, we set off west to explore a bit hereabouts.

To Drews dam, which is the dam of the huge Drews reservoir; a cooperative effort by local farmers.

Then back to highway 140 west, and stopped for lunch in Bly, a small town. Probably needless to say, the little cafe/diner we visited was selling Trump merchandise. That’s the way it is around here.

Anyhow we discovered that, during the second world war, the Japanese had sent bombs aloft on balloons, and employing the jet stream, attempted to create havoc in the Pacific North West, hoping to cause forest fires and such.

This tactic wasn’t terribly effective, except in one case, where a Sunday School picnic outing was wiped out near Bly, Oregon. 6 folks died, including the wife of the local minister. Wikipedia

Here are a couple of photos: