Simple is Best

The Bend Farmers Market is finally back in action after a long winter, letting us switch from sourcing ingredients at the store to supporting our local farmers. This last week, we grabbed a lot of good things: salad greens, arugula, hakurei turnips, sablefish, and beef short ribs. I'm not big on steak, but I love ribs.

Roasted Beef Short Ribs

Friday, while I browned the beef ribs on the stove top, rotating them to cook each of the six sides, I cut some celery and carrots into bite-size pieces. Then I peeled all the cloves of garlic from a head. Into a roasting pan went the celery, carrots, and garlic, then I added a few sprigs of fresh thyme and fresh sage.

Very Lean Short Ribs

Once the beef had browned, I deglazed the pan with a very little bit of water, a couple tablespoons really, and poured that over ribs and vegetables in the roasting pan. After covering the pan tightly with foil, I put it in a slow 275F oven and left it for 4-1/2 hours.

Oven-Ready Ribs and Vegetables

To serve, I spooned vegetables in a bowl, put the ribs over, drizzled it all with a bit of the juices in the bottom of the roasting pan, and gave it all a good sprinkle of salt. This is about as easy as dinner gets.

Rafting the Lower Owyhee

After the conclusion of a 5-day epic rafting trip in the wilderness and a 4-hour drive back to Bend through snow squalls in the desert, walking in the front door and heading upstairs to a hot shower, a flush toilet, and running water reminded me of how grateful we should be for these luxuries in our day-to-day lives.

Conversely, heading out into the wilderness for five days away from day-to-day stress, family drama, and total 24x7 connectivity reminded me of how grateful we should be for wonders of the natural world around us.

For a balanced life, we need both parts, civilization and wilderness, to remind us of how fantastic each part is, to not take any part for granted, to be present always, and to absorb everything that happens in our lives.

Happy Warm and Dry Campers, at Canyon Camp on the Lower Owyhee

The impetus for our latest outdoor foray requires flashing back to January when Ann and I were talking casually, likely over a beer at Crosscut, our favorite pub. She mentioned, almost in passing, that she would really like to try whitewater rafting, something that I had never considered before. I filed that tidbit away and in February, when I learned that we would receive a small distribution from my late father's estate, I started looking into rafting possibilities as a surprise for her.

Choosing a Trip

My search for rafting possibilities was not random, however, because the river to raft was never in question. Ever since I saw the first photographs of the canyons along the Owyhee a couple of years ago, that destination went quickly on my "someday" list.

The name Owyhee is a 19th century spelling of Hawaii. The river name honors three Hawaiian trappers from the North West Company who were tasked in 1819 with exploring and trapping along the then-uncharted river. They failed to return to the rendezvous and likely died at the hands of local tribes.

I spent a couple days looking into companies who raft the Owyhee and I quickly selected Momentum River Expeditions, headquartered in Ashland, OR. I wanted a small company, a guide-owned company, and a local company as opposed to an out-of-state or national company. Moreover, I got a really good feeling that their style matches our own. Choosing Momentum is a decision that I would never regret; they are a first-class outfit.

Next, in trying to schedule the trip, I looked at historical water levels versus historical weather patterns on the Owyhee and tried to select the timing that optimized the highest water levels with the nicest weather. As a rule, as the weather gets nicer, the water level drops. As a river whose level is controlled solely by snowmelt, the realistic rafting period is April and May. I aimed for the middle and ultimately booked for the final five days of April. 

My prior experience in kayaking and whitewater canoeing suggests that in general, more water flow is better. Monitoring the USGS water gauge about three miles north of the Rome boat launch in the few weeks prior to the trip, I noted really nice flows above 8000 cubic feet per second (CFS) in the first half of the month, but the levels quickly plummeted to below 5000 CFS at mid-month. Although I was worried that the level would continue to drop, it stayed in the 4750-4950 CFS range for the duration of our trip, plenty of water for fun rafting, but not for the big and somewhat dangerous hydraulics.

In the high desert, the weather in the spring is always a true crapshoot. We live here so we're not surprised by the highly variable weather patterns: cold mornings, warm afternoons or cold afternoons, and random snow or rain. A week out, NWS was predicting cold rain all day our first day with improving weather through the trip. Fortunately, most of the rain blew through the night before as we drove east. We stayed dry with the exception of a few brief sprinkles. The wind, however, was a bit crazy on certain days and we did not really expect that. Still, all in all, no rain to speak of and generally sunny to partly cloudy skies were a win.

Our drive back home through snow squalls, followed by light snow the next evening and sleet the morning after is a stark reminder of how fickle our spring weather is in the high desert and how fortunate we were to have decent weather on our trip.

Getting to the Owyhee

Let's start by recognizing that the Lower Owyhee River is located in the middle of nowhere in a part of remote Oregon that has very few services and more livestock than people. The Owyhee Canyonlands Wilderness is a true wilderness in every sense of the word.

Most rafting trips on the Lower Owyhee start at the BLM boat launch in Rome, OR in southeast Malheur County just 30 miles shy of the Idaho border. Rome, or more familiarly called Rome Station after the lone café/gas station at the river, is a wide spot on US 95 (the main route between Boise and Reno) where it crosses the Owyhee River, about 4 hours southeast of our home in Bend. 

Given the early morning start of our trip, we did not want to get up at 4am to make the 4-hour drive for our 9:30am rendezvous. For the rest of us Oregonians, the time zone is always an issue because the majority of Malheur County keeps to Idaho time, Mountain Time, the sole Oregon County not in Pacific Time. This is historical in that this part of Oregon is tied financially and culturally to Idaho and to Boise in particular. In any case, 9:30am in Rome is 8:30am by our clocks in the rest of Oregon.

The time zone change would also come into play in an unexpected way after the trip. When I document our trips, I often shoot photos on both my camera and my phone. Back home, I sort them by time to get them in rough order. My phone managed to get itself on MDT before I put it in airplane mode for the duration; however, my camera has no concept of time zones and stayed on PDT. This made for some interesting sequencing issues when I sorted the photos by time. We also noticed that the sun was setting after 9pm on the river, while it would be just after 8pm back home.

To make the early start time in Rome, we could have camped at the boat launch or stayed at the lone motel in Jordan Valley, OR (population less than 200) right on the Idaho border. But I knew that Ann's preference would be a larger hotel and the two largest places with hotels are Burns, OR and Boise, ID. Although we have friends in Boise with whom we could have stayed (Tim, thanks for the kind offer!), staying in Boise would have required an additional 4-5 hours of driving for the entire trip. We decided to stay in Burns.

We left Bend about 4pm on Thursday afternoon and the delightful April spring day quickly gave way to a cloudy, damp, rainy kind of yucky day as we made the 2-hour slog through the desert to Burns. We've made this trip a bunch, so there's just not much novel to see along the way through the desert. The highlight of the drive to Burns was sighting a male Yellow-headed Blackbird in full breeding plumage on a fence in a low, wet spot just west of Burns. In this same location, we saw three Northern Harriers, two of which pounced on prey while we were looking, not a sight you see every day.

We arrived in Burns about 6pm and promptly filled up our gas tank (gas being a huge consideration before heading out to the boonies) before checking in to our room at the Best Western. For dinner and breakfast the following morning, I made four smoked salmon, caper, and cream cheese bagels. We ate a bagel in our room rather than try to find something eat in tiny Burns, population maybe 2750. If push comes to shove, the best eats are probably at the deli counter in the Safeway. In any case, staying the night in Burns cut our drive the next morning in half, leaving only a couple of hours to Rome.

Smoked Salmon, Caper, and Cream Cheese Bagels

The following morning, I set the alarm clock for 6:15, to have us arrive in Rome about 8:15 (9:15 MDT). No need: I woke up at 4am after a fitful night and couldn't get back to sleep on account of the Robin outside our window which started singing at 4:30 and our neighbors who started crashing and banging at 4:45. This wasn't a great start to the day, but pretty much SOP for me. I just don't sleep when I'm waiting on an alarm.

As we drove east out of Burns on OR 78, we ate another bagel, while keeping an eye on all the bird life around us. As we crossed Silvies River and bent southeast around the infamous Malheur Wildlife Refuge, the ditches and low, marshy fields were crawling with ducks, overflown by skeins of geese, and covered with flocks of foraging gulls. Every now and again, I would see smaller shorebirds, such as plovers, but we were going too fast to sort them out.

The further we went south, the drier the land became. On this part of the drive, we saw many fence posts topped with either Western Meadowlarks or California Quail, as well as Black-Billed Magpies flitting across the road. As is usual when driving along any irrigated land out west, we saw many raptors perched on the irrigation rigs.

Ultimately, OR 78 tees into US 95, the main route between Boise and Reno, and we headed left, north towards the river. We arrived in Rome just at 9:00am MDT. After parking in the big lot at the boat launch on the southeast corner of the junction of US 95 and the Owyhee River, we did a quick reconnoiter of the parking lot and boat launch and found our guide, Amanda, as we walked back to the car. The remainder of this tale is covered in the Day 1 post.

Our Rafting Route

Our 5-day route would take us from the boat launch at Rome in a generally northeast direction to the Leslie Gulch boat launch on the Owyhee Reservoir, some 68 river miles north, just under 37 miles as the crow flies. I thought pre-trip that we might have taken out at Birch Creek, but that bumpy dirt road is a difficult slog for raft trailers. 

Our trip is highlighted on the map sections below, shown from north to south. Because of the northerly direction of our travel, our starting point, the most southerly point, is on the last map below. Each day of travel is in alternating colors, fuchsia for one day and green for the next. The final day included a 12-mile tow on the Owyhee Reservoir behind a motorboat. I would have hated to have paddled all that flatwater in a raft. That route is shown in dashed purple.

I took on the order of 1500 photos of which I selected roughly 325 of the best that are included in the following posts:

Day 1, Rome Boat Launch to Hackberry Camp, 15 miles
Day 2, Hackberry Camp to Middle Ryegrass Camp, 8.5 miles

Extra: Hike to Pruitt's Castle

Day 3, Middle Ryegrass Camp to Canyon Camp, 11 miles

Extra: Hike to Lambert's Dome

Day 4, Canyon Camp to Pothole Camp, 14 miles

Day 4 Afternoon, At Pothole Camp

Day 5, Pothole Camp to Leslie Gulch Boat Launch, 19.5 miles (12 under tow)

Extra: Petroglyphs and Artifacts

Day 5 - Tow from Mile 56 to Leslie Gulch Boat Ramp, Mile 68

Day 4 - to Pothole Camp, part 2 (green)
Day 5- Pothole to Mile 56 (fuchsia)

Day 3 - to Canyon Camp, part 2 (fuchsia)
Day 4 - Canyon to Pothole Camp, part 1 (green)

Day 2 - to Middle Ryegrass, part 2 (green)
Day 3 - Middle Ryegrass to Canyon Camp, part 1 (fuchsia)

Day 1 - to Hackberry Camp, part 2 (fuchsia)
Day 2 - Hackberry Camp to Middle Ryegrass Camp, part 1 (green)

Day 1 - Rome Boat Launch to Hackberry Camp, part 1

The Owyhee Experience

I had never been rafting before, so I was not really sure what to expect. Sure, I've been whitewater kayaking and canoeing before, mainly on rivers in the Southeast, so I had a good clue about being on the water. However, kayaking is an active experience in a nimble craft whereas rafting is a more passive experience in a more sluggish vehicle, albeit great for photography.

Without a doubt we had a blast on the water, especially hitting a huge hole and wave coming out of Whistling Bird that I hope you'll read about on Day 3. But the rafting, at least for me, was a smaller part of our overall experience and was the vehicle by which we could experience the highly varied geology and scenery of the Owyhee, the true highlight of the trip. There is no disrespect to Momentum in saying that the sights of the wilderness were the highlight.

As a first-time visitor to the Owyhee, with everything in the experience being new to me, I find it nearly impossible to express the overwhelming sense of being awestruck by our surroundings in a way that no photographs can adequately capture. The character of the river changed in amazing ways with each river mile such that we were seeing something new all the time. I went from one jaw-drop moment to another constantly. My camera, except in the hairiest whitewater, was never far from my eye.

I've seen a lot of canyons and rivers in my life, but none like the Owyhee. Compared to the big canyons along the Snake or the Grand Canyon along the Colorado, the Owyhee is much more intimate. It is one thing to be at the bottom of one of those towering but wide canyons; it is wholly another experience to be deep in a narrow canyon whose vertical walls you can touch, whose dizzying heights mesmerize you even from the bottom.

The breadth of scenery was unparalleled in my experience. Our route started in relatively flat farm country, on top of an old lake bed. The river quickly ate into that lake bed, becoming eroded and exposed, as we drifted north. From there, a section of steep rhyolite cliffs gave way to more sedimentary hills punctuated with rhyolite spires and basaltic cap rock. Then it was on to more intrusive magma structures, gabbro or granite, vertically grained towers and higher and higher canyon walls.

From there, we went through the Chalk Basin with its astounding layers of linen-colored sedimentary soil and chocolate-colored lava flows. As we worked our way into the heart of the trip, the river narrowed and we found ourselves on rapid water with vertical walls extending up over a thousand feet in places, a sight that you might imagine from reading the Anduin scenes in "The Lord of the Rings."

After the super deep and impressively vertical canyon section that some call The Grand Canyon of Oregon, the walls started to lower gradually until the riversides morphed to grassy, rolling hills. The further north we went, the more that the riverside became dotted with impressive rock spires jutting far skyward.

And then far too soon, we hit the flatwater of Owyhee Reservoir which we transited in tow behind a motorboat, letting us look all we wanted at the massive rock formations along the reservoir. Each time we looked, we saw something else as beautiful as the last thing that we had seen. Even the drive out of Leslie Gulch was mind-blowingly beautiful. I don't really have words to adequately describe the colors and textures of the land in this part of Oregon.

This overwhelming scenery coupled with the incredibly hard work and phenomenal attentiveness of our crew made for an epic trip. I have rarely seen people work as hard as our girl-power trio of Amanda, Sara, and Elena to the point where I almost felt obligated to help them with their workload. Being in the service industry for much of my life, I thoroughly appreciate all their efforts and I totally understand why they insisted that I be the guest and let them do their jobs.

As a lightweight backpacker, I would bring along perhaps 25 pounds of gear for a 5-day jaunt and that would include 2 pounds of water and 10 pounds of food. I was constantly amazed at the amount of gear that the ladies packed, unpacked, and schlepped each day, to include grills, stoves, propane, fire wood, fire pan, portable toilet, tarps, tables, pots and pans, china, silverware, coolers and much more gear that you will see in the daily photo-essays from the trip. I still remain amazed at how cheerful they remained through it all. All three of them spanned the ages of our own children, mid-20s to early-30s and caused me to wonder if our own kids would ever work this hard.

For obvious reasons, my hat is off to our trip guides, but equally importantly, I want to recognize all the people at Momentum unseen behind the scenes who were instrumental in handling the complicated logistics of our trip to a true wilderness. Like a restaurant where your contact is only with the service staff, there is always a big crew toiling away in the back of the house. Kudos to all.

Delightful Food

The food on this trip was really quite remarkable, and as a chef, I totally understand what it takes to pull such a thing off. Moreover, in real life, I cannot get anyone to cook for me because people are intimidated by my skills. They do not realize that chefs are used to scarfing scraps from a deli container while doing five other things. So when someone cooks anything for us chefs, we are eternally grateful. I was so happy to have someone to cook for me! And if these ladies were intimidated in any way, they never let on!

Momentum's pre-trip literature reminded us that it is arid along the Owyhee and to bring plenty of lotion and lip balm. So I was expecting a repeat of my extended stays in northern New Mexico in which I have had split lips because of the lack of moisture in the air. Being already acclimated to the scarcity of humidity in Central Oregon, I didn't even notice a change along the Owyhee.

All our camp sites were thoughtfully chosen. I'm having a hard time deciding which camp I liked the best, but I really thought Canyon offered the amazing experience of being deep in the canyon. Still, Hackberry was quaint and Ryegrass, while flat and uninteresting on the face of it, was a great place to hike above the river and see wonderful wildflowers and spectacular geology. Pothole on Day 4, Amanda's favorite and maybe mine, offered great views of pinnacles and the area where the river braided into several channels, plus had the most amazing sunset.

I assume that there is no cell signal on the Owyhee; I put my phone on airplane mode back at the hotel in Burns long before we ever arrived at the river. I loved being disconnected. The only time I missed having service was when I would want to look up something about a geographical feature or other sight along the river.

Finally, I experienced a few firsts on this trip beyond it being my first (but not last: we have already booked on the Rogue for August) rafting experience. I have long desired to find a Bitterroot in bloom which I did on the flats above Ryegrass near Pruitt's Castle. And as many times as I have been to the desert, I have never heard or seen a Chukar. They were so common on this trip. And you may find it hard to believe that I have managed to attain 62 years of age without ever having a 'smore. No more; that box is now checked off!

Although Canyon Wrens live within a couple hundred yards of our house, I am going to miss their special calls cascading down the canyon walls to the beat of the clucking of the ubiquitous Chukars. This and the sound of water rushing over the rocks is the song of the Owyhee. I miss it already.

I believe that I speak for both Ann and me in summing up our experience with Momentum on the Owyhee quite simply: minds blown!

Click here to read about Day 1.

Rafting the Lower Owyhee: Petroglyphs and Artifacts

In a desert environment, any water source is an important resource. In southeast Oregon, the Owyhee and its tributaries provide a water source in a notably arid land, water that has always attracted both people and animals. For indigenous peoples, the river provided water, a navigation landmark, and a source of game millennia before the Euro-Americans came on the scene. It should be no surprise then that artifacts of these peoples are scattered along the river corridor.

On day four of our trip, Amanda pulled our raft to the side in a fairly non-descript location to show us a large collection of petroglyphs (stone etchings) and to feed us lunch. When I started wandering the area and realized how big a collection of artwork is in this location, I began to ask myself why this location. 

Site of Boulders Covered in Petroglyphs; Why Here?

The site seems almost random to me. There is nothing here that would indicate that this is a good place to camp, hunt, or fish. Moreover, it does not seem to mark any geographically significant location or a place of high visibility such that other travelers might see the artwork. When I put my question to the group, the best we could come up with is that this is a good location for these basaltic boulders whose dark color really shows the figures etched into them. Maybe the petroglyphs are here merely because this type of rock is here.

Estimates of the age of these petroglyphs vary and while dating such things is complicated, all estimates are clear that these artifacts were here long before the modern Northern Paiutes and Shoshones wandered this area looking for food and water. I have read a couple of accounts that the oral history of these tribes does not include making petroglyphs. I wonder if these more modern tribes were as mystified as am I about why their progenitors selected this site.

In addition to petroglyphs, I saw a lot of flint that looked like it had been worked all along parts of the river. At this particular petroglyph site, there are caches of flints and arrowheads. These caches are necessarily hidden to keep people from stealing the artifacts. While it is not illegal to pick up and keep these things, even on public land, I believe that they are not our property and should remain where they were left.

Flints and Arrowheads

Arrowhead and an Animal Etching

Flint Flakes from Arrowhead Making Site

This final photograph is from a site in the Chalk Basin where I came upon an area where people clearly sat and flaked arrowheads. There were hundreds and hundreds of flakes that are clearly man-made in origin. I returned all the flakes that I photographed to the exact location where I found them. I want to leave as little trace of my coming and going as possible.

Rafting the Lower Owyhee: Day 5 - Pothole to Leslie Gulch

"Goose Drama"

This post documents our fifth and final day of our recent rafting trip down the Lower Owyhee River in far southeastern Oregon, four hours from our home in Bend.

After a cold night in which I battled my leaking sleeping pad, re-inflating it four times, I finally awakened at 5:50 in the morning to raucous Canada Goose calls and to thoughts of the logistics of how to pack and what to wear on our last day on the Owyhee. I really started regretting having to get home and wished we could extend our trip. I'm pretty sure I don't speak for Ann in this regard.

Again, I put on five layers before exiting the tent but unlike yesterday morning at Canyon, today we were on the west side of the river where sunrise comes early. We all took a moment out of what we were doing to watch the sun rise over the ridge opposite us. How many times in life do we get to see that? And with all that early sun, I was shedding layers by 8am.

Pre-Sunrise Cloud Formations

Sun Coming to Our Side of the River

Sun Almost Down to Our Camp

Et Voilà! Sunrise!

All the while we were drinking coffee and huddling around the fire waiting for the sun to come up, we had to deal with the most obnoxious goose drama ever. In the photo below, which shows the very tip of the big formation behind our camp, at the very top, backlit against the sky and slightly right of center, sits a goose, a very noisy goose.

It would sally forth from time to time, sometimes alone, sometimes with a compatriot, and make a lap of the rock spire or a lap in front of the spire. Then, it would land either right back where it started or on another high place, either alone or with its partner. And it would honk incessantly. Other geese from nearby pinnacles and even from down on the river would add their voices to the near-infuriating goose drama to which I awakened and which went on for hours. SO MUCH DRAMA!

Overly Dramatic Goose Atop a Rock Spire

The final stage of today's trip would be a tow across the reservoir, so before breakfast, we made sandwiches to eat during our tow. In reality, we ate them waiting for our tow to arrive. Breakfast was a scramble with mushrooms, tomatoes, and peppers along with a big batch of home fries and Canadian bacon. We motored through breakfast and got our gear packed quickly; we could all feel that Amanda wanted to get moving so that we did not miss our tow connection. She feared a possible headwind that fortunately never materialized.

With all of us hustling, we got away in decent time and started our final miles on the flattest water of the trip. Today was the only day that all three rafts would travel together. We would go just 7.5 miles from Pothole Camp to river mile 56, a mile below the limits of where motorized vessels are allowed to go. There, after lunch, we would chain together our rafts with those of the other group we had been leapfrogging for the 12-mile tow to the Leslie Gulch Boat Ramp. Our human-powered rafting route is shown in fuchsia on the lower map below while the tow route is highlighted on the upper map in dashed purple.

Day 5- Pothole Camp to Leslie Gulch Boat Ramp
(fuschia in raft, purple dash under tow)

The water on Day 5 was flat but still moving at a decent pace. The wind that Amanda feared did get up, but it was directly behind us and helped us make good time to the motorboat rendezvous. I took some last photos of the rock features on either side of the river as we neared the quasi-civilization of the Birch Creek takeout. The road out is steep and rough and a tough slog while pulling trailers of rafts, hence our tow to the much more benign Leslie Gulch road.

Civilization! The Birch Creek Road

An Old Waterwheel for Irrigation

More Trees in One Place Than We Saw All Trip
Birch Creek Takeout

Elena Doing Her Thing

And Sara

White Pelicans

Great Blue Heron

Great Egret

Still Bundled up Against the Raw Day

At the Rendezvous Point for the Motorboat

Say's Phoebe Watching Us

We arrived at the rendezvous point some 20 minutes ahead of the other group that would be joining us in the tow across the reservoir. We ate lunch as they were arriving, a prim and proper bunch if I have ever seen one. Each time we encountered them on the river, it just didn't look like they were having any fun. When we'd see them, they looked like schoolkids sitting in their perfectly spaced desks, hands folded in front of them, and heads attentively pointed at the teacher. 

We waited a pretty good long time for our tow boat, populated by Luke and his four dogs who all came to visit with us. He apparently was making many such tows today. At long last, we got lashed up and underway for the two-hour, twelve-mile tow. In our three boats, we all laid back and propped our feet up, while taking in the rays and the sights while under tow. Contrast this to the boats in front of us with all the students still sitting properly at full attention in their desks. Different strokes, I guess. I hope they had some fun.

During the tow, we saw many typical reservoir birds such as Mallards, Canada Geese, Lesser Scaups, Western Grebes, various gulls, and Double-crested Cormorants. We also saw a great many White Pelicans which probably live here or at least visit on migration, but which I consider unusual, having only ever seen them in the Gulf of Mexico or when flying over Great Salt Lake. Groups of pelicans were soaring frequently overhead; I forget what impressive fliers these huge birds are.

Among many turkey vultures and a couple of Red-tailed Hawks, we might have seen an eagle, but it was terribly high and far away enough that I couldn't tell. I am very surprised to have not seen any eagles at all during our trip, however, lack of large trees for nesting sites would deter Bald Eagles, while Golden Eagles are not really fish eaters.

Just Under Tow

Sara, Bopping to the Tunes in her Head

Final Stretch Just Before Leslie Gulch Boat Ramp

At the end of the scenic two-hour tow, we arrived at the boat ramp and it was a bit of a cluster trying to get seven rafts unhitched and on the ramp. But in the end, it all got sorted and we started hauling all the gear out of all the rafts in preparation for putting the rafts and gear on the trailer. Al, driving the Momentum van, backed the trailer in and then she started breaking down gear like a whirling dervish.

I felt guilty about watching the ladies doing all the work, but understanding how it would be if we had "helpers" in the restaurant kitchen when we were breaking down for the night, I got the hell out of the way until I could use my height to help lift the big coolers and the topmost raft onto the trailer. This gave me time to hit the disgusting pit toilet and to wander about and shoot a couple photos of the gorgeous rock formations around the Leslie Gulch ramp.

Unpacking Everything

Loading up was a well-rehearsed and choreographed affair and soon enough, Al took a final photo of our group and we were off, albeit slowly, as we wound our way out of the dirt road leading up and out of the gulch. The road was in surprisingly good shape and both sides were covered with balsamroots with their gleaming yellow blooms dancing in the breeze. 

Last Stop: Coffee at the Rockhouse in Jordan Valley

Vista after incredible vista unfolded as we climbed up and out of the gulch and by the time we got out to hard-surfaced US 95, we could see residual snow on the Owyhee Mountains across the border in Idaho. At Amanda's insistence, we stopped at the Rockhouse in Jordan Valley before continuing the last leg of our 2-hour shuttle back to the Rome Boat Launch. I had a double espresso to help keep me going for the four-hour drive back to Bend, with a stop at the Safeway in Burns for a bite to eat for dinner.

After battling snow squalls and the setting sun directly in our faces, we arrived home just after dark, longing for a hot shower and a soft bed.