Following day 2, we were up on the morning of day 3 on the road to the sound of songbirds. We lingered over some coffee and then headed south along the byway. We had a hike we really wanted to get to way upstream on the Owyhee. I wasn’t to sure about fitting it in since it was so far out, but after reviewing the maps we ran across the road past Crutcher Crossing then up the other side of the Owyhee would get us there. Or so I thought. We had an entire day of exploration to get to where we might take off for a hike. Plenty of time even if the road was slow going. It started out beautiful, full of wildflowers and absent of people.
As is typical on this type of road, the further you get from the good road, the worse the road gets. But actually it was pretty good going, overall. Until we started to descend into the canyon towards the river. Then I started thinking, I sure hope I never have to travel this road again. And of course that is just what we had to do. Upon reaching the river, despite the apparent good road on the other side, we found there was absolutely no crossing at Crutchers Crossing. I assume Crutcher must have had a horse. There is no vehicle that has a chance at even thinking about a crossing. So we turned around and up we went. Until we didn’t anymore. I like to say we were ‘temporarily detained’ by an extra large rock on a particularly steep and slanted piece of road. And that’s all I’ll say about that. Sorry, no pictures, as we were too busy utilizing our rock hammer we had along for rockhounding pursuits to shave the top of the rock off that was temporarily detaining us. That task done, we moved on and found a lovely site for the night where the antelope play (yes they were literally playing right there before we arrived).
We were absolutely alone out on that road for portions of two days. No people, just antelope, bighorn sheep, birds, wildflowers and expansive vistas. Not a bad way to spend a couple days.
We made our way back to the byway, hopes of the second hike we had planned delayed for now. I guess we’ll take the long way next time. Still, abundant wildflowers and bighorn sheep kept us company on our journey.
As we made our way to the lower country it seemed the road was moving. At second glance, yet it was moving. Mormon crickets had been run over and the live ones were coming in droves to eat their cousins. I still can’t get over the number of them, but now we do have a slingshot on hand, should the situation ever present itself again.
We made our way to one last camp spot. We planned to hike but weren’t quite accustomed to the heat yet. Too hot in the afternoon, and once we were up and ready the morning before we needed to hit the road for home it was too hot again. We took in the view from camp over Little Jacks Creek.
Most of my thoughts were along the lines of: “When can we come back and see more of this country?”
