Leaving Portland on the 30th of September marked my first forays into places I hadn't been. I headed west towards Mount Hood intending to spend the night there. Turns out that the nicest places are marked as government campsites (pay) and the less nice places have scary roads. How scary? I started down one which almost immediately degenerated into a scrawny path with no way to turn around. It's along the side of the mountain so I don't mean there was underbrush blocking a turn, I mean there was a steep hill on on side and a dropoff on the other. At first I drove along assuming that at some point there'd be a parking area or trail head that would allow me to turn.
Then I reached the rock.
The road/path scooted around the edge of a large boulder that was blocking the path and that would have been okay except for the tree that had fallen right next to the boulder. Earlier travelers of the path had driven over the tree several times so there was kind of a way through but damn it was skinny. I somehow managed to wiggle through without hitting either the tree or the rock and kept going. About ten minutes farther along there was a pullover section that was big enough for me to turn around without falling over the side of the hill so with a huge sigh I headed back towards the main (well. not dirt path) road.
Then I reached the rock, again.
Curiously in the space of 20 minutes I had managed to completely block this thing out of my mind. Once again I tried to thread my way through and was almost there when it seems I angled away from the tree a bit too soon. Nasty scraping sound but I was not going to stop there to look at it. I eventually reached the road, headed back towards the highway and decided I didn't want to stay near Mount Hood after all.
Eastern Oregon is stunning and perhaps the most awe-inspiring section is around Warm Springs. The road turns a corner to hugely open views of a deep canyon with a scattering of houses at the base. Sadly no pics but the drive down into and back out of the canyon is amazing.
I stayed on the road until Bend and discovering that there were no places to stay (for free) I went a little further to the Deschutes National Forest. I saw a sign pointing to the Lava Cast Forest and on a whim I decided to check it out.
This is where I made the decision to never again go somewhere without first researching it.
A mile or so along the road it suddenly becomes a poorly maintained, seriously washboard road that limits speed to less than 10 miles per hour in many places. Especially in an rv. The boys and I jiggled along for a very long time and never saw any more signs for the forest. Fortunately my gps got a signal and my phone realized that I was not in Salem but in the middle of a forest. On Lava Cast Forest Road. At this point I had no idea if there was really something to see ahead or if the entire drive had cool stuff along the sides that I wasn't recognizing as cool.
Having no clear reason to keep going forward, I turned around and headed back, figuring I'd go as far as I could before it got dark and stop there for the night. The way back never seems to take as long as the outward journey and I reached the paved part of the road at dusk. We pulled off the road into a wide spot and I spent the next half hour trying to find all the things that had jiggled off the counter while driving.
I still don't know what the lava cast forest is.
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