Exploring

Death Valley, 2021, Part 1

Death Valley is a special place. I can’t think of another National Park where you can truly get away from it all like you can in Death Valley. Heck, it’s hard to think of areas that aren’t the over commercialized tourist infested zones that most National Parks are, like the vast tracts of Forest Service and BLM lands, that have what Death Valley has to offer those willing to wander off the beaten path. The distances are vast, the roads are rough and the mountains are rugged, and perhaps my favorite, the people are few.

And that’s precisely why, with a reasonable block of time to get there all the way from Central Oregon that we headed there for a long Thanksgiving weekend.

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Wandering the Southern Oregon Coast, 2021

With Veterans Day falling on a Thursday we decided to make a long weekend of it and escape to a location that was too far for a regular weekend. With cold weather and some snow on the east side of the Cascades we narrowed down our choices and headed to the South Coast. The quickest way to get to the Brookings vicinity is actually through California, down Hwy 199, the Redwood Highway, so we took off and headed there for an overnight along the Smith River. Things have been brown and dry in Central Oregon for a while so it was nice to wake up to blooming shrubs and lots of green the morning of Veterans Day.

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To Ft. Rock and Back

The Bend Fort Rock Ranger District on the Deschutes National Forest used to be two districts. From 1921 to 1945 the Ft. Rock District was headquartered in Cabin Lake north of the town of Ft. Rock.

We spent a weekend exploring the old Ft. Rock side of the Deschutes, along with some adjacent BLM land. A few highlights were Oregon’s largest juniper tree and Derrick Cave.

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