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.
We woke up to snow, camped in the East Troublesome Fire, near Stillwater Pass, but it was just a dusting. We finished up the loop and aired up when we hit the pavement. Today we’d be headed south in search of more aspen, through Leadville and hoping to find a camp south of there.
We planned to see about picking up some drive by pie in Grandby we heard about, and we pulled into town right at opening time. The proprietor had a slice of blueberry ready to go for us, and easily talked me into a butterscotch cookie to go along with the pie. If you are near Grandby, make sure to stop for pie!
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A while back we started a retirement truck camper list. Campers to consider if we wanted to move past the Four Wheel Camper Eagle, if we were living more full time on the road. Well, one of the campers on the list is actually available to rent from a place in Colorado (https://goexploreit.com/). A few months back we set aside a few days, hoping for fall colors and reserved the 2021 Tiger Bengal TX for four days of testing and exploring Colorado.
The folks at goexploreit were great to work with and provided everything we needed for the trip. They set us up for off road adventure and even provided maps and books with a suggested itinerary for the days we had available and what we were interested in. Tables, camp chairs, and ax and saw, winch, air down/up kit, tools, cooking utensils, everything. We’ll cover the truck in more detail in a future post. For now, we’ll get into the trip report. And of course if you want the video summary here it is:
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