Still Searching For That Water In The Desert

What is it about the desert that calls to me so strongly? After all, I'm WoodsChick, not DesertChick. I don't know exactly what it is, but the solitude and absolute silence are good for the soul. The smell of sage is intoxicating, so much so that I put off running my pants through the washer when I get back to the city. I also like seeing the horizon in almost every direction I look. I feel like I can breathe deeper when I'm in the desert, as if the wide open spaces allow my lungs to expand just a little bit more. Well, whatever it is, the siren song of the desert lured me away from the city for 6 glorious days over the Labor Day holiday.

We left on a Wednesday evening, spent the night in Winnemucca, and headed out in the morning to camp near the Oregon border. I'd been hankering for a ride on the 450 so I decided to ride it on the first day as we headed out to find a route over McGee mountain that would take us down into Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge.

The ever-present wild burros...




I was surprised to see it so green...




Headin' into them thar hills...




The soil is so much nicer on top of the mountain...



Heading down into the refuge...




Ahh, the water felt great!




Cruising through a little valley...



The view that greeted us as we crested the top...




The trail we were looking for down below...









The mouth of the gorge at the bottom...




We found an abandoned track across the desert and headed for camp, arriving with 60 miles under our belts.

As I was watching the sun dip below the horizon, I turned around just in time to see the full moon coming up in the east. The sunset and moonrise happened almost simultaneously...cool!



Even cooler still was the next morning when I was lying in bed marveling at the sky as the sun was about to peek over the mountain. I happened to look to the west in time to see the full moon sitting on the horizon in almost the exact same spot where the sun went down the previous evening. Don't believe I've ever seen that happen before!

Moonset in the desert...




Day 2 (a 200 mile'r) on the way...



WoodsChick

Why, thank you, xymotic I'll take that as a compliment



WoodsChick

S'nice.

Nice, let's see the rest.

Day 2-

There was a bit of a heatwave going on when we got to Nevada, but temps were supposed to drop over the weekend. We figured we'd hit Steens Mt while it was hot in the valleys, and then screw around in the lower elevations once it cooled off.

Headed north towards Funnel Canyon...or so we thought...




"Hey, that single track looks nice!"...




Leaving Nevada behind...



Lots of rocks in Oregon...




Eric coming down the hill...



The entrance to Funnel Canyon proved to be a bit elusive from the south so we ended up going over/through Lost Mountain instead...whee!













We weren't sure exactly where we were, but we thought we had it all figured out when we got to the top of the ridge and could see the Alvord Desert to the north...



I figured we'd follow the ridge heading north until it dropped us down onto the valley floor. The road had other plans, though, and we ended up on the pass headed towards Fields...



No trip to this area is complete without a stop at Fields Station for one of their burgers and shakes. They make potato salad on the holidays but it's incredibly difficult to pass up their fries...



I ate that burger at about 1:30 in the afternoon, and ended up eating a "dinner" of dried mango, peanuts and a nectarine at about 9pm that night, only because I thought I should eat something. These things stick to your ribs in a big way! While we were there we saw about 12 people pull up outside, all on older XR's and quads. There were a few modern tiddler Yamahas for the kids, and I think the granddad was on a quad, but mostly older iron. They'd been camping down the road a piece and had wandered north for the shakes. They all seemed to be having a good time, but y'all wouldn't know it because I didn't think to take a photo...doh! A blue and yellow Husky showed up just as we were leaving.


We headed out towards the Steens Loop. I'd been wanting to do this scenic loop for some time but there has always been too much snow. Not this time!





The gorges were spectacularly jaw-dropping...




Much like the Sierra range, the eastern slope is very dramatic...





The top is very tundra-like...






More to come...


WoodsChick

I just love it.

Yeah, well, if you'd invited me along on your ride we wouldn't have NEEDED BETTER TIMING!!

(and yes, that's me shouting at Stroker Ace...just in case anyone is wondering...)

And yeah, I could use some lessons on how to get close to the edge without getting all queasy and dizzy...this is the closest I could get...





ScaredyChick

More niceness.

Day 2 continued...


We goofed around up in the Steens longer than we had anticipated, and coupled with all the fancy route-finding that morning in the Lost Mountain area, we were racing the sun to get our miles in before dark. Eric had no tail light and I had no head light. Well, not entirely true...I had a light when the bars were at full lock toward the left. I'd have been OK had I been flat-tracking around the mile, I guess.

The shadows were getting mighty long when we got to the northern end of the Steens Loop...



We tried to get gas in French Glen, but the store was closed so no go.
We didn't really need it, but it's hard to pass up gas when given the opportunity. Oh well.

Wild horses...



We pretty much high-tailed it toward the southwest and found a nice little place to camp right next to a little stream. We had done a tidy 200miles for the day



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Day 3...

It was too dark to take photos the night before so we had to wait til morning...



I love this tent. We left the rainfly off since it was a full moon, and the trees filtered the light so that it was nice and dappled, not so bright that we couldn't sleep. Besides, after soaking for an hour or so we slept like rocks...






We spent the morning soaking after a breakfast of huevos rancheros, tortillas and fried french fries from Fields the day before...






We headed out and made a stop at this little lake...




Did I mention Oregon was kinda rocky?






We headed down into the Warner Valley for gas. Man, this place just keeps getting prettier and prettier!




Uh-oh...why is my sleeping bag loose?



Funky little bolts broke that hold the pannier protectors on. No biggie, nothing a little safety wire can't fix...



And what a beautiful place to have to fix a problem! The air was so sweet and fresh, I just couldn't believe it. I tried to figure out what was so fragrant, but I couldn't see anything I could reasonably contribute it to. The wind was blowing across the lake, so I know it wasn't the alfalfa. It smelled like perfume. I'm half deaf, and most of the time I don't really miss being able to hear out of one ear, but if I lost my sense of smell I'd be really sad. I take great pleasure in the smells that greet me while riding...








We headed into the booming metropolis of Plush for some fuel and ice for our water bladders. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that it's pretty much always windy in Plush. Check out the trees...



We got a big soda and Eric bought me a really pretty polished sunstone as a souvenir. It's a beautiful shimmery copper and pinkish glass looking thing, and it comes out of the ground not far from Plush. I wanted to go digging around and find one for myself but we decided it would be more fun to ride another 200 miles instead. We filled our water bladders with ice and lounged on the porch for a spell. I had snipped some fresh mint from my neighbors yard the day we left and had put a few sprigs in each bladder after giving them a little squeeze. Man, what a brilliant idea that was! The water was so fresh and tasty, and the same sprig lasted the entire 5 days we rode! When I took them out the day after we got home, they looked just as fresh as they did the day I put them in. I get really tired of water, but tea and gatorade and all that stuff just mucks up my Camelbak bladder. Besides, one can never have too much water in the desert. Radiators, cooking, cleaning flesh wounds...you know, stuff like that.

We headed south out of Plush and did a little bit of exploring on the way...









More of day 3 to come...


WoodsChick

We were just going through some old travel brochures and maps tonight of places we've been or thought we wanted to go someday. This very area was in one of them!


I'm eating up those pics...

It really is a lot of fun out here. I really enjoy the 610 in this stuff, but I've got to get back to the singletrack at some point. My skills are probably diminishing with every ride, but it's so much fun! We're heading into dirtbike season here, though, so I'll probably put the street tires back on anyway.

I don't know what happened to my photos. I think maybe I messed up the settings on my camera. I should really have my glasses on when using it, I guess Not only that, I always get a prompt about re-sizing my photos when downloading them but this time the prompt did not appear. My photos are smaller and grainier than usual, which isn't a good thing because they weren't all that high-quality to begin with. Kinda bums me out. I might try downloading them to SmugMug instead, enen though there are a few more hoops to jump through when posting them


WoodsChick

Well, your pictures might look lousy to you, but I think they look just dandy.

First part of May? Dang...that's the Moab trip, and I gotta go because I've missed it the last few years. There's simply too much riding to be done. I need to quit my job...



WoodsChick

Day 3 continued...

(sorry for the delay; I had to go to a Giants game last night...)


We took off from Plush and ended up kinda where we had started that morning, but we turned the bikes southeast and went through some more of the wildlife refuge. Oddly enough, we've been through here before and we knew this was where the deer and the antelope play, but none were to be seen as of yet. Maybe they knew it was hunting season? I wonder where they went?




I might've mentioned that Oregon has some rocks, no?




This kind of stuff went on forever in this valley. Hey, is my sleeping bag loose again?



Same issue, same fix, but I put the sleeping bag behind the red and orange bags just to be sure.


We were in a pretty arid region...until we came to this, that is...




It wasn't very deep, and the bottom was solid and rocky so no drama...




My turn...



We started seeing Pronhorn antelope here and there, and the further south we got, the more we saw. Hmm...

4-way intersection, Oregon style...



This track was really cool. We rode along a creek for awhile, then the track kept cutting back and forth across it. It was really rocky on top, too. I think I chunked off a little more of my front fender out here somewhere.


Where are we going?






Hey, look! More water! And pronghorn antelope!





At first we only saw a few, but then we realized they were everywhere!
We counted 35 in this herd. Crappy photos, I know (no glasses, bike running, taken through dusty binoculars, etc...) but you get the idea...



While we were marveling over the 35 animals, we started seeing animals starting to stand up on the other side of the reservoir. They were everywhere...and not a hunter in sight! We counted about 35 in the other herd, as well, but they started moving as we were finishing our count so there were probably more. I felt like I was on Safari in Africa or something. Too bad they were so far away. Good thing I never ever leave home without my binoculars!


We started to drop down off the plateau...




And pulled up at the ranch...




If I'd known you was comin' I'da baked a cake...




Nice water system...




The water tower...






Nice shop...






Someone put a lot of effort into this house. It was really kind of a sad and lonely place...








I wanted to spend some more time there. I wanted to know all about the history of this place, and decided I'd do a little research when I got home. I wanted to wander around the corral, walk up the hill and check out the tombstone, take a look inside a few more outbuildings, dip my toes in the lake, but we were already pushing it as far as daylight goes. I much prefer this kind of riding in the spring or summer when it stays light later, but this is what we had to work with, so...

We said our good-byes to the ranch and its memories and pointed our bikes south down the valley along the dry lake bed. The sun was dropping quickly and the light shining across the valley was very soft and serene. Too bad my crappy photos don't do it any justice...





We crossed the valley, headed up onto the next plateau, and hauled the mail all the way til sundown. I wish I'd had time to stop and record all the beautiful things we saw along the way, especially since we were smack dab in the middle of the Golden Hour and the scenes had an unreal quality about them.

We camped without a campfire again, which was the only bummer of the trip, but I learned to live without it.

Day 3 saw us put another 200 miles on the clock


Day 4 coming soon...


Woodschick