Oh my word! What a first time adventure we had yesterday. It won’t be soon forgotten. On the maps it is known as State Route 27 but we will forever call it “Shake, Rattle, and Roll Boulevard.”
To survey the campgrounds of Malhuer we used numerous forest service roads. All were paved and winding but there were stretches of single lane and potholes. The Delorme (the mapping software we use) suggested route to our next stop, Paulina, was over some of these routes but it was unclear if the roadways were all paved or gravel. Fred balked at using such routes without knowing the roadway’s make-up. So, I told him to find an alternative.
Fred’s alternative was going to the community of Prinville and backtrack to Paulina for a day of research. His route took us down US 395 through Burns to US Rt 20 and west to Brothers where we turned onto SR 27 and began about a 25-mile stretch of gravel and dust roadway. The first half wasn’t bad, although there was a drop into a valley that was, for me, a little nail biter. As we started to leave that valley the washboarding began. Bounce, bounce, rattle, rattle, clatter, clatter – not a whole lot of fun but we made it. Pictures on the floors, stuff in cabinets spilled, tossed, and moved hither and tither, and dust everywhere.
On one hand, it wasn’t a fun experience but on the other it was a beautiful drive and I am glad we took. This is especially true once we reached the Prineville Reservoir and the Crooked River corridor. The Reservoir is enormous but its man-made origin apparent in the mucky green water. The River’s corridor is a river-carved canyon through many layers of basalt lava. It might be some of that “flood lava” flows we have heard of in other places. Whatever it is called the canyon walls tower high above, each layer having a different appearance and text. There is one layer that looks like close packed columns, another has a foamy appearance, and some with swirls and curves that appear to have been mud combed by a drunken sailor. Totally amazing and we would never had seen it if not for taking this route. Once again we see problems are just challenges to be overcome and most challenges are interesting adventures to have.
July 14 - Isn’t it amazing how things seem to balance out. The challenges of yesterday were rewarded with the delights of today.
A reasonable early start to our day began with a stop at the local library to pick up our email and do a little computer work using their WiFi connection (got to love it). Than we headed for Paulina, following another section of the Crook River through one valley after another. The main activity in these valleys was making hay (while the sun shines). The “bales” of hay being spit out by the machines were huge bricks or rolls. Each was the size of VW bug or larger. We could have literally hidden Squirt, our Suziki, behind some of those bales. It was a beautiful drive through those green valleys surrounded by gray-green sagebrush and bisected by the Canadian geese and heron dotted Crooked River.
We passed through the “town” of Post, all one building of it, and hurried onto the bustle of Paulina. It isn’t the smallest town we have seen (after Post it appeared rather large) but it certainly is close to achieving that label. There is a general store with gas station, groceries, and saloon all in the same structure and a K-8 grade school with a auditorium/cafeteria larger than all the classrooms. You got to love a town where the livestock is kept in the backyards and the town’s Marshall, a black and white Sheepdog, patrols Main Street
One blink of the eye and we were through Paulina and on our way to some of the Ochoco NF’s campgrounds. This is were our reward awaited us. It has been a while since we have visited a campground that just “spoke to us” but Sugar Creek did just that. Sugar Creek is your basic NF campground – not fancy or with any hook-ups but it has all one needs to enjoy a great forest experience: Towering Ponderosa pines, smelling sweet and butterscotchy in the afternoon sun, gave every sites lots of shade. There was enough of a breeze to cool and help the pines sway to and fro. The parking aprons are long and level. The tables and fire-rings clean, no beer cans or leftover squirrel dinners. The area around the fire-rings raked (a good practice in a forest that can experience more than 7,000 lightning strikes in a day). We hadn’t seen vault toilets as spic-and-span as these in eons. A paved trail circles around a campground along stretch the clear flowing creek which we were told contains some good size, challenging Rainbow trout. And there is a lovely swimming hole. So much peace quiet you could almost hear the grass grow. Sugar Creek campground – my idea of a perfect campground.
There might be two reasons why Sugar Creek campground is delightful. One is it is w-a-y out there. It is probably a 70 something miles drive from Prineville and, although all paved, that is a long way to go. The second reason relates to the Forest Service – those folks seem to really love that little place in the woods and take a great deal of pride in its appearance. Too many of the forests are so shorthanded and overworked, and I doubt the Ochoco is any different, but somehow they get the job done and done well. Thank you.
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