Sightseeing from the Cab

If two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? 
Ecclesiastes 4:11

We stopped for the night last night a little earlier than usual.  After leaving the Volcanic Monument, we found a spot on a forest service road just a few miles away, so we were parked with engine off by just after 6pm.  We could have traveled further but we needed to catch up on some Bible study, write a travel journal entry, and look at the map for a while to determine where to go tomorrow.

With the engine off, that source of heat is now gone.  Even the afterburner, as we call it, the auxiliary heat that uses the heat of the engine to warm the cabin, turns cold after about a half hour.  We usually set the furnace at about 58 degrees and let the cabin cool to allow good sleep.  Our earlier stop meant that it cooled more as we were working.  Deb usually reclines on the bed and surrounds herself with her maps and materials, I usually sit in front at the table with the computer and cameras.

Maybe it was the forecast for snow, but the cold seemed to seep in more than usual, and even with extra clothing on, we were both chilled to the bone after a while.

That changed when we went to bed.  Solomon was right, if two lie together, they keep warm.  With blankets piled on we were soon warmed up and comfortable.  Then, in a post-menopausal hot flash, Deb was throwing off blankets and complaining that she was too hot.  Solomon said nothing about this.

Who needs a furnace when you have a wife?

When I looked out the window this morning, there was two inches of snow on the ground.  Snow can be beautiful, but right now it's something we're trying to avoid.  So the weather is pushing us south at a faster rate than we would otherwise go.  Looking at things from above, even the lava dome that we were hiking around yesterday was white with snow.  We considered spending some more time in Newberry National Volcanic Monument, but this nixed that.  We also would really like to visit Crater Lake National Park, but most of it is closed for the winter and the online webcams revealed a few inches of fresh snow on those areas that are still accessible.  Maybe next time.

For the first half-hour or so, the roads were rather icy, until the sunshine melted through the snow.  We could then make normal progress.

We branched off US-97 on State Route 31 just south of La Pine.  This road, called Oregon’s Outback Scenic Byway, angles down towards US-395 which we plan to take south for a ways.  There are also a couple of points along this route that deserved investigation.

First stop on this route was Fort Rock.  About 8 miles off the road, it is an imposing rock sticking up out of the high desert.  Coming closer reveals an opening on one side, making the rock form a large ring.  This is a “tuff ring set”, or a volcanic cone in what once was a lake.  Oregon has made a state park out of it and we stopped at this state park to take a look around.

We hiked the trail around the inner circle and the partial trail that was available on the outside of the ring.  The crags in the rocks are supposed to be a haven for falcons, but all we saw was pigeons.

We made lunch before getting back on the road again.

Quite a bit of today was spent sightseeing from the cab of the RV.  State Route 30 is indeed scenic in a wide-open, desolate sort of way, and it was an enjoyable drive.  A good half-hour is spent driving around Summer Lake, which is an enormous alkali lake which look like a vast salt flat.  From the road we could see dust storms and dust devils swirling across the expanse.

We stopped at the top of Picture Rock Pass, as one of the brochures said there was some petroglyphs on a rock.  We found some dispersed campsites, we found some trails, but we didn’t find any petroglyphs.  The brochure said they could be found on a certain rock less than 100 feet from the road.  There were about a billion rocks near the road of all sizes and we didn’t want to inspect each one so we moved on.

I spotted a ranger station in the town of Paisley.  A rather nondescript building, which matched the size and nature of this town.  I stopped to let Deb pick up any brochures that may be useful.  By now we’ve picked up quite a library of them and they have been useful in ferreting out some interesting places.

Deb was in there a long time.  I finally went in myself and found her talking to two guys who loved to talk.  She was having a little difficulty breaking out of the conversation.  One of the guys was telling her that he lived in Bend for 20 years.  He hated it.  It was too crowded, too big.  So he moved out here, to the middle of nowhere.

“But if you wanted to move here, you probably can’t,” he told us.  “Nobody will sell you any land.  About the only way you can get any land is if someone dies.  Then the family usually hangs onto the land.” 

I guess they have the growth problem figured out.  Just never sell.

He also told us there are some of the largest ranches in the US around here.  By some accounts, the ZX Ranch is the largest in the US.  20,000 cattle ranging over 1.5 million acres of land. Down from 30,000 head in its heyday. So we’ll add that to our “World’s Largest” collection, with a little editorial license.  World, US, sort of the same, right?

We were going to stop at the hot springs near Paisley, as they looked intriguing.  Both outdoor and indoor rock pools at 104 degrees.  Unfortunately, this is a private business and they were having some sort of event at the time, so drop-ins like us were not being accepted.

We finally stopped at Ramhorn Springs Campground, a BLM campground about 3 miles of washboard dirt road off of US-395, arriving here at around 8pm.  No cell signal here, so will have to update the online version of this when signal is available.  Total miles covered today: 350