Bend Oregon

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With our two nights in Sisters ending, we are heading just a bit further south to Bend. We are hoping for better air quality but I guess we won't hold our breath. The plan is to stay at the Elks Lodge. They only have 9 spots but two of them are not large enough for our rig. When we pull in at first we think we are in luck. One of the spots seems to be open. However once we get closer, it turns out the spot is taken but by a shorter rig so we didn't see it at first. We pull over into an area to the side of the lodge that appears to be where the overflow rigs park but don't completely setup. When we go in to register, we find they are having a lunch special that sounds pretty good so we sit down for lunch. One of the guys in charge tells us we can park in a different portion of the lot closer to the street. The advantage is that it's more level and completely paved instead of the dusty area we had picked. The disadvantage is that it's closer to what turned out to be a pretty busy road. We pay for 6 nights of boondocking but hope that something opens up before we leave. It turns out to be quite a busy place. Before night falls, there are four additional rigs boondocking there. 

Sunset at Bend Elks Lodge with Smoky Skies

While we were eating breakfast the next morning, we see one of the larger motorhomes pulling out of the lodge. Chris runs over to confirm there is an opening and quickly gets the Jeep moved into the spot to hold it. It doesn't seem like anyone else had even realized the spot had become available. We pack up the rig to drive it about 400 feet to the other side of the building. It's not like everything needs to be done but it still takes a bit of time before we are squeezed back into the site with 50 amp and water. When we go in around lunch time to pay for the new site for 5 nights we discover they are having fish and chips for lunch so we stick around for that. We have found that all the Elks Lodges seem to have friendly people. Be it, locals that might give us the inside scoop for things to check out while we are in the area, or fellow travelers that share some tidbits from their travels. 

We used to be much more avid bicycle riders in our younger years. Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's, we had purchased 5 bicycles and a tandem. We had done two different long bicycle trips - one around Lake Ontario and another in Nova Scotia.  In 1991, we had even taken 7 weeks to bicycle from Los Angeles to Nags Head North Carolina. So when we decided to sell everything to become fulltimers, we ended up getting rid of many of our trusty steeds and only kept our two mountain bikes. These bikes have seen lots of trails and I have maintained them very well but since they are approaching 30 years of age, we decided that it might make sense to come into the 21st century and get new bikes with nicer features. If we are going to buy new bikes, it only makes sense to do so while we are in Oregon since there is no sales tax.

Chris and Her New Friend in Downtown Bend

We head into the Old Mill District in Bend which turns out to be just a huge bunch of shops. One of them is REI so we take some time to check out the bikes and at least try to get a feel for what is available at different price points. Chris keeps reminding me that our current bikes or any new bikes are going to spend their lifetime in the outdoors. They don't get to live in the family room like our other bikes had. So even though I might really like a $4000 full suspension bike, it might drive me crazy to see it suffer from all sorts of bad weather we might experience as we wander the country. Like normal for two engineers, we don't make any impulse purchases. In fact we didn't even test ride any. Right now we are (I am) in a fact finding mode.

The mill district was really crowded and we discovered why. Just across a pedestrian bridge is a large craft fair. The vendors seemed to be selling pretty nice things, not your normal fair fare. Turns out it is a juried show where all the vendors have to apply and be selected to participate. Of course, we really don't need or have room for many of the items I found interesting. 

View from Pedestrian Bridge at Mill District

We noticed dozens of people floating down the river in tubes or rafts. It turns out that tubing on the Deschutes River is a very popular activity. We subsequently discover that the town has put in a bit of a whitewater park at one portion of the river. People have the option to go over a handful of small rapids or walk their tube the couple hundred feet past them if they aren't feeling adventurous. Next to the rapids section is a place where they have a drop off that has formed a standing wave. There are ten or more people with their surfboards waiting for their turn to hang ten. Some of the surfers are obviously quite skilled and could likely continue for long periods of time, but they eventually give way to the next one in line. There were a few that would barely get into the water before the surfboard goes flying one way and the surfer the other. As they wash downstream they swim over to the shore to come back up and stand in line for another attempt. Looks like fun but not something we would try!

Surfing the Deschutes River

Wipeout as Board Goes Flying

Tubers Having Fun

Big Group Holding On

As we continue to have some smoky days, we find we are getting outdoors less. It's kind of a bummer since this area seems to have lots of interesting things to check out. On one of our slow days, we head over to Pine Nursery Park.  It's a nice little park with the standard playground and ball fields and trails. We do some geocaching as we walk around the park. We discover there is a disc golf course, but we never find the chance to make it back for a round. There were several rugby games going on while we were there. One was a men's game and the other was a women's game. We don't know much if anything about the rules of rugby and after watching the women play for ten minutes, I don't think I figured it out any better. 

We finally get some better air quality - not great, but better than we have been experiencing. We head west of town to the Mount Bachelor area. We know not to attempt any serious elevation hiking with the slightly smoky conditions but we head to The Todd Creek trailhead. There are three trucks with horse trailers in the parking area but we never come across them or anybody else for that matter. The trail we have picked to hike has several geocaches along it and is part of the Metolius Windigo Horse trail. It's a 100 mile trail that runs primarily north/south on this side of the mountains. Since this is an arid area, the horse trail is unlike many we have attempted to hike. Usually we find horse trails to be muddy messes. This had some really dusty sections but was generally a fine hiking trail. We ended up doing a total of 7 miles which was plenty long enough given the conditions.  

Parking Area at Todd Creek Trailhead

A Glimpse of Snow on Mountain

Creek with Lots of Wildflowers

Bright Red Berries 

At Scenic View Heading Back to Bend

The next day our air quality was reasonable again so we went to an area just west of town along Skyliners Drive. There are lots of trails out this way. Much of it is used for mountain biking but we opt to just hoof it. There were a series of caches where you needed to find one cache in order to be told where the next one was. It is kind of like a multicache but you get credit for each of the intermediate caches you find. The series hadn't been found in nearly a year so it was a good challenge. We find ourselves hitting the southern tip of Shevlin Park which might be a good destination on a return trip. Not having good trail maps definitely hindered our ability to navigate from one to the next. Towards the end of the day, we found ourselves high up on a ridge overlooking a stream below, but it took us what seemed like forever to navigate a trail that did eventually wind its way down to the water. This turned out to be a 6 mile hike but with all the trails and geocaches, we could have easily come back several days without seeing it all. 

View Near Shevlin Park

On our last full day in town, we visited another couple of bike shops. I have started to narrow down what I am looking for but we are still trying to figure out what Chris wants/needs for her next bike. We also stop at Pilot Butte State Park. It is basically the remnants of an old volcano that is pretty much in downtown Bend. On a clear day the views are probably spectacular. On this smoky day - not so much. Designating it a state park seems a bit overkill to us. It is basically a spiral drive up to the top with parking and information signs.

The Wildfire Smoke Ruins the Views from Pilot Butte

Since our next destination is more remote and we will be there for a week, Chris decides to go grocery shopping while the getting's good. It was a rather hot afternoon, so we had the shades pulled and the air conditioner running. About 90 minutes later when Chris returned, I come out to help unload the car and discover that the winds had shifted dramatically. It smelled like we were parked right next to a raging campfire. Worse than that, there was actually ash in the air. I guess the silver lining is that no embers were falling from the sky! Of course our next destination is heading towards Crater Lake National Park, where some of these wildfires are presently burning. We likely would have cancelled this stop if it wasn't over the Labor Day weekend. I guess we should just keep our fingers crossed that we don't end up surrounded by wildfires. 

The Total Solar Eclipse We Nearly Missed

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Many people had made plans to view the solar eclipse a year in advance. We hadn't put much effort into the planning until April and by then most of the campgrounds were completely booked. We had found a place to stay that was in the path of totality on a site called Boondockers Welcome. The site lists people that have room on their property to fit a visiting RVer. There are not a huge number of locations across the country, probably a few hundred. But we had found one just south of Madras Oregon that we had contacted in mid April to see if he had room for us during the eclipse. And he did!

On Boondockers Welcome, you are only expected to stay a night or two so that was what we had planned for. We were going to come in the day before the eclipse and leave the day after. We had even booked two days at different campgrounds on either side of those days so we could be sure we had a place to stay during the crowded time. But a week or two ago our host, Bob, called and told us the expected crowd in the central Oregon area was going to be massive and he suggested we come in a couple days earlier than we had planned. Fortunately our plans were rather flexible so we were able to shift the stops by two days and hopefully get there before the roads were too bad.

The drive out of Mount Hood Village to central Oregon takes you up and over the Cascade Mountain range. The drive is nice since there is a good view of nearby Mt Hood at many points along the uphill climb. Things were going well with a fair amount of traffic but it was moving right along. We were probably only 15 minutes into the drive going up a reasonably steep grade when we heard a loud thud from the rear of the coach and all of a sudden I had no power. Fortunately we were just coming up to a good sized paved pullout so I slowly worked my way of the side of the road. 

We had no warning lights on the dash, the engine seemed to be running fine, but we had no power. I shut it off and went out to see if I could find anything obvious like smoke, leaking fluid, steam, broken belt, etc. But I didn't see anything wrong. We called the 800 number for our chassis maker - Freightliner. After a bit of a wait, I gave the guy all the info I could. He concluded the transmission was stuck in the wrong gear. After trying one thing and pulling forward in the pullout a bit, I could tell it was no better. So he talked me through reprogramming the transmission. To see if this helped, I needed to pull out onto the road since my pullout was all used up. I waited for a break in the traffic and pulled out. I managed to get all the way up to 7 or 8 miles per hour. With flashers on, traffic used the passing lane to work its way around me in and there was another pullout we stopped at. 

We knew there was a rest stop at the top of the pass and it was only about 2 miles away. We tried one more thing suggested by the service guy on the phone and pulled out again. Still we had no power. We crawled until there was another pullout and figured we might need to call for roadside service. It was then I noticed an Oregon DOT truck behind us. I talked with him and he confirmed there was both a rest area and a ski lodge parking lot just a mile or two up the road. He had a big sign on the back of his truck that could display a flashing arrow and he agreed to follow us up until we could get to a larger parking area to regroup. It seemed to take forever but we made it and the ski lot was mostly empty with only a few dozen cars parked. We sat for a bit and it was starting to sink in that we would likely need to have the motorhome towed back to Portland for repairs and we would miss the eclipse or at least miss totality.

We unhitched the Jeep and I opened up the rear engine compartment to see if there was anything I might have missed. It was then I noticed that the 4.5" pipe that feeds the turbocharger had snapped a hose clamp and was disconnected from the charge air cooler. It looked promising that if I got a clamp, I could be in business. But where would I find a clamp? Not here in the town of Government Camp Oregon. But I could probably drive back towards where we were and find an auto parts store and get something that would work. It was just then that a guy who was working on a tour bus just on the other side of the parking lot walked over to see what our problem was. He and his buddy were sent out from a garage in Portland to work on a hydraulic leak on the bus. He wasn't sure if he had a clamp that would work but we went back to his truck and found that he had plenty of clamps too small and one too big. We decided we could daisy chain two smaller clamps and make it work. He put us back together and said it might hold until we get to where we were heading but it might not. There is a special clamp that is to be used in this situation so our solution was far from ideal. Chris had offered to make them sandwiches for his help since he wouldn't take any money. We snuck some cash in the bag with the food and I assume he eventually discovered it.

We drove the rig a couple miles through the town of Government Camp and it seemed to be running like normal. We came back and hitched up the car and continued on our way. The next 50 miles or so are mostly downhill and we seem to be doing okay. Just outside of Madras is another climb of about 800 feet. Halfway up the climb, we experience the same loss of power. We managed to crest the hill and start down into Madras. Even with all the people coming here for many big eclipse gatherings, we manage to get into a parking lot out of the way of traffic. We find there is a Freightliner service center about 25 miles away in Redmond. I call and find they have the right type of clamp, so I drive the Jeep there, get the clamp, come back and install it and drive the 10 remaining miles to our boondocking spot. 

Our guests are Bob and Peggy. They previously were fulltimers for quite a few years but had now settled down on their five acres near Terrebonne Oregon. Being on the dry side of the Cascades, most of the property is not irrigated so Bob shows us the general area he wants us to park and we pull in and setup. They were having about 4 other rigs staying and had actually expected a couple more but those people had cancelled when they heard how bad the traffic was expected to be. Other than a couple from the Netherlands with a rental RV, all the others were friends and family of the hosts. We got together the first evening and sat around the patio meeting everybody. 

Sunset in Terrebonne with Smoke from Sisters Fire

 

Cloud Looked Like Donut

Looking Over Boondocking Spot for Eclipse

Another View

With a couple days to kill before the big event, we went out and explored some of the area. Smith Rock State Park is not too far away so we headed there. Apparently we weren't the only visitors that decided this was a good place to be - the place was packed. Since we will be in Oregon for awhile and the state park pass is only $30, we opt for it. The park has many trail options. Some that go up and over the rock formations and others that follow along the Crooked River that runs through the park. Smith Rock is a big destination for rock climbers. There are dozens of people in small groups all along the river climbing various sections of the rock walls. We see many other places where there are anchors in the rock for climbing. We stop and are amazed at the strength and agility and either fearlessness or stupidity of the people climbing. Most seem to be attached to a safety rope but there were a few that were free climbing. At one point along the trail was a safety shack with a few tools, crutches and a metal stretcher for the inevitable accidents that may occur.

View at Smith Rock State Park

Stretcher and Crutches - Just In Case

A Couple of Climbers

There is a Guy Up There!

Slightly Closer View - He is Nearly Centered in Picture

Beautiful Late Afternoon View from River Trail

Also in town is an alpaca ranch - Crescent Moon Ranch. They are right along the main road in town and hard to miss since there are almost two hundred of the animals living in the many acres of fields next to the house and the store. They have lots of very young ones that look to be all legs. They even have a geriatric one that is 21 years old. They have bags of feed you can buy in the store and go out and wander along the fences feeding them as you go. The very young ones were uninterested in the handouts while the adults were very conditioned to come over for a bite. The problem with the adults was if more than one was trying to eat, they tended to get a bit aggressive. The most well behaved ones were surprisingly the juveniles. They would come over and eat quite nicely out of your hand. 

Inquisitive Alpaca

Chris Feeds a Juvenile

Mom and Baby

Chris Feeds Adult

Lots of Alpaca

Everyone Likes the Alpaca

Another tourist destination wasn't too far from our camping spot at Peter Skene Ogden State Park. It is located right where US 97 goes over the Crooked River. There are three bridges near one another. The current one carrying the highway, an active railroad bridge and then the former highway bridge that is now a pedestrian walkway with one exception. There is a big truck parked here with a platform that extends up and over the railing of the bridge so that people can bungee jump. With all the people visiting for the eclipse, this place was busy both times we were there. The platform is 300 feet above the river and by selecting the right bungee based on a person's weight, the person will fall 250 feet before being yanked back up to bounce around a few times before a hoist will pull them back up to the platform.

Looking Down the Crooked River

Leap of Faith

Train Heading North

 We stood and watched quite a few people jumping. Most would scream during the jump, but some would remain eerily quiet making us question if they had passed out on the way down. Most of the people would get up on the platform, let go of the railing, put their arms above their head and take the plunge in a matter of 15 or 20 seconds. One person obviously had second thoughts once she was staring at the river below. It was nearly 10 minutes before she got the nerve to jump - I'm pretty sure they didn't just push her but all the onlookers were cheering her to jump! Chris wanted nothing to do with it but I was contemplating it figuring you only live once. It's only $129 for the first jump and if you want to jump again, subsequent jumps only cost $49. I was informed I would NOT be doing it!

This Guy Wore a Rabbit Suit to Jump

Heading Down

Bouncing Back Up

On the morning of the eclipse, the ten of us got out our chairs, donned our eclipse glasses and sat on the driveway to watch the show. Bob had an app that accounted for our exact location and it would count down the various phases of the eclipse. I hadn't bothered to buy any special solar filters for any of my cameras. Since we had a couple extra pair of eclipse glasses, I was able to create a filter for my GoPro and found I could simply point my small Sony camera through the other half of the glasses. I had my Nikon DSLR on a tripod so I could shoot during totality. 

Watching the Eclipse

In hindsight, I should have put more thought into photographing this spectacle but I found myself more interested in just experiencing it. It turned out the video from the GoPro was far from impressive. Surprisingly the shots with the Sony were reasonable but small in size based on the focal length of the lens. I hadn't carefully focused the DSLR so they are a bit soft. Oh well, maybe we will get to experience the next one in 2024?

Composite of Eclipse

The afternoon after the eclipse, we went back over to the nearby park to watch bungee jumping again. It was then we saw the huge traffic jam heading south on US 97. Many of their people were probably heading home to California somewhere. The northbound traffic was light at this point, but was likely as bad or worse once you got the handful of miles up to the Madras area. I'm glad we opted to stay the extra night to let some of the craziness subside. 

Slow Moving Traffic After Eclipse

Bull in the Shade

From Bob's place, you could often see the smoke from the nearby Mille fire in Sisters Oregon. This one had turned bad and forced quite a few evacuations over that way. Our dilemma was that we had booked a spot in the town campground in Sisters. We called to ask what the fire and smoke status was before we headed out. At that point there was no real fire danger, and the smoke level would very quite a bit as the wind direction changed.  Even though the place was identified as "full", it was pretty empty. They have a no refund, no cancellation policy so I suspect many people just don't show up because of the fire and the sites go paid for but unoccupied. 

Before heading to Sisters, we swing by the Freightliner service center in Redmond. I want to understand if there is some underlying problem that caused the hose clamp to snap off the first time. I had noticed about an inch and a half lateral misalignment issue and suspected that something may have loosened to cause that. After a couple hours of investigation, it was determined there wasn't any real new problem. The original design of the bent pipe ahead of the turbocharger was not real good and there is a replacement one that can be installed. Of course it can only be installed if it is in inventory somewhere. Right now there are none available and it is unclear when they will be running another batch. They reassembled things as good as it probably was from day one and for the time being we will live with the status quo. 

Replacement Clamp

The drive from Redmond to Sisters is a short one so we didn't bother towing the Jeep. It seemed a bit odd to be driving into the smoke, but we took the word of the campground that there was no fire danger. Sisters Creekside Campground is a nice place under normal conditions. We opted to avoid any real strenuous hikes based on the air quality warnings we were experiencing. The town itself is a cute little place. We walked around and found the library, a good burger joint and a bakery with some good looking bread and coffee cake. For the most part we took it easy and stay inside as much as possible. 

Home Stretch to Solar Eclipse

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Our next stop was another Elks Lodge in the Olympic Peninsula. We had originally planned on staying here for 5 nights but our host for the solar eclipse called and suggested we come a couple days early based on traffic predictions. With this stop of three nights, we will have spent 31 nights straight staying at 6 different Elks Lodges. This one is in Hoquiam Washington. It's a small place so I won't be surprised if you have never heard of it. This is one of very few lodges that allow you to make a reservation in advance. We had called a few weeks ago and put a deposit down. They had told us to park in spot #1. There are only six spots behind the lodge and when we pulled in, another rig was already parked and guess which spot he was parked in? Yep #1. Turns out, there are Master locks on the electric boxes and water spigots at each spot. The other guy had found spot #1 was unlocked so he picked that one. It probably was left unlocked for us, but since the bar opened in 90 minutes, we just waited until then to go in and settle up for the rest of our stay and get the keys to spot #4.

We didn't have lots of planned activities for our stay here so three nights worked out okay. We went in for a couple beers after dinner and ran into another couple that pulled in after us. We sat and talked about each other's travel experiences before heading back to the rig so the bartender could close up. Apparently they close when they run out of customers, so we may have kept her longer than usual.

The next day I wasn't feeling 100% so we took it easy in the morning and stayed in the rig. We heard all sorts of commotion at the backdoor of the lodge and found this rather loud couple with all sorts of furniture apparently from the lodge. For about an hour they attempted to pile all this furniture into and mostly on top of their old four door car. There were a couple Lazy Boy chairs, metal bookcases and who knows what else. Each time I looked out they had amazingly managed to pile items even higher than the last time I looked. I quickly grabbed the camera as they pulled out of the parking lot. Let's just say they could give the Beverly Hillbillies a run for their money!

Modern Day Beverly Hillbillies

Now that the morning entertainment was over, we headed west to the coast to Ocean Shores. This place is much bigger and your typical beachside tourist area. Lots of souvenir shops, restaurants and bike rental places. We headed to the interpretive center to look around. Then did a walk along the beach on the bay side of the town. There was one kid with a surfboard trying to "hang 10" but not having much luck. I am by no means an expert - heck I can't swim - but the waves didn't look big enough to be able to surf.

At the Interpretive Center

The Bay Side of Ocean Shores

We had planned to do a longer hike to the end of a spit but there were warning signs stating they were spraying herbicides that day and we should wait at least 4 hours after application. Since they didn't have a time stamped on the sign, we erred on the side of caution. One other beach area we checked out was on the ocean side. This was much busier area and even permitted vehicles to be driven on the beach. Some people were out in the water, but it looked too cold to us to be doing that. Since we were there, we drove to the Elks Lodge located in this town. We had really wanted to stay here, but there was something going on and they had told us they were going to be full when we called a few weeks ago. The place looked nice but it was full. Maybe sometime in the future we can make it back this way.

Looking Out the Spit

Shark Themed Store

The next day we headed back north along highway 101. We had wanted to stop at another portion of Olympic National Park called the Quinault Rainforest. One of our neighbors in Forks had stopped with their motorhome and disconnected their car to drive around and told us a bit about it. We thought it sounded nice but decided not to stop as we drove past it the other day. It isn't that far back north and is closer to Hoquiam than it is to Forks.

There is a nice nature walk that takes you past some big trees. If you have been paying attention, there are a lot of big trees in Olympic National Park especially on the western rainforest side. I didn't think this was as nice as the Hoh Rainforest so if you are in the area and limited on your time, I suggest you go to Hoh instead of Quinault.

More Big Trees

Big Leaves Catching the Sunlight

Just a bit further up the road is a ranger station and a huge lodge with a great view of Lake Quinault. The rain gauge on the building shows the record at over 15 feet! We found a picnic area to have our lunch and soak in some of the beauty here. Continuing counterclockwise around the lake, we get to the largest Sitka Spruce tree in the world. Now having just seen the largest red cedar a couple days ago and being underwhelmed, I wasn't expecting much. Well this one is much more impressive mostly since it truly looks to be alive. It is 191 feet tall and about 18.8 feet in diameter. That makes this tree a little taller and slightly smaller in diameter than the cedar north of here.

Lake Quinault

The Big & Beautiful Lodge

Rain Gauge on Lodge

Record Sitka Spruce

Chris is Dwarfed by Spruce

We continued the drive with the intention of going the whole way around the lake. Our Forks friends had warned us about the dirt road being bad, but I suspect that is a relative statement because we found it to be fine. Or maybe more to the point, we have driven roads much worse than this one. Admittedly there are stretches on the north side of the lake where it is definitely 1 lane, but we didn't see any other idiots driving the road so we had no big problems. We stopped here and there checking out some waterfalls or old buildings and abandoned vehicles. Is this a must do loop? Probably not, but if you have time it isn't a "don't bother" side trip.

Intricate Carving with Elk Above

And Fish Below

Waterfall Along Drive

Old Fence with a View

Fixer Upper

One brief geocaching interest along the way in Amanda Park near Highway 101. A cache is hidden in a phone booth. Yes! A phone booth. There are actually two, side by side. Neither have phones anymore, but there is a phone book on one of those pivoting holders. The log sheet is taped in the yellow pages in the location the word "cache" would appear. We thought that was a unique hide.

Our three nights in Hoquiam went fast. Next head over to Interstate 5 to go south around Portland and head toward Mount Hood. Actually a place called Mount hood Village. We had a two night reservation at the Thousand Trails Resort. We pulled into our site only to discover it wasn't the full hookup site we had expected. We had lots of laundry to do and I wanted to thoroughly flush the tanks so we went back to the office and was able to upgrade for the two nights we were there. Definitely one of the more expensive places we have stayed but it fit the bill and we were only here two nights.

The campground is reasonably close to two different significant geocaching locations. One is the location of the very first geocache. Unfortunately that specific cache is no longer active, but there is a cache that is a tribute to the original stash (as it had first been called) and this is one that hardcore geocachers want to find. The second significant thing are two old geocaches. One is the second oldest active geocache in the world which was placed on May 12, 2000. The only older one is in Kansas and is only one day older than this one. There is another old cache nearby but it was placed on July 21, 2000.

I suppose if we really wanted to we could have tried to accomplish all these things in a day, but we are trying to slow down our pace so we decide that we can come back up this way after the eclipse and explore this area with a bit more time. We think we could use a different campground as our location for the original stash, so we opt to drive up into the forest to get the two old caches plus a few others that happen to be nearby.

The drive into the mountains was a foggy one but it didn't last long. We needed up have some pretty nice weather to be up here. We found the parking spot for the one cache and started along the trail. Actually it was an old paved road that has been dug up just at the end to prevent vehicles from traveling on it. So the walk was pretty easy for at least half of the 3/4 mile to the cache. It was even easier since it was slightly downhill. We took one wrong turn along the way, but caught our error in about a tenth of a mile so it wasn't a big issue. The cache is sort of what we expected, a five gallon bucket (many of the first geocaches were this size). From the logbook, the cache is found fairly regular even though it is in a fairly remote area. Our signature wasn't the first for the day and we were here well before lunch.

Second Oldest Active Geocache

We went after a couple other nearby caches and then thought we could take a shortcut back to the car. Well that "shortcut" turned out to make us spend an additional 45 minutes with the only upshot was we got one more geocache than we planned. What was showing up as a road on my GPSr had been a road at one point. It had even been paved, but the guys in charge of this portion of the forest really didn't want people to use this road so they must have gone over the road with a bulldozer dragging a heavy duty fork which broke the pavement into foot sized chunks oriented in all directions. After a couple minutes of trying to use this "shortcut", we bailed out and bushwhacked back to the woods trail. Yes the woods trail was longer but much easier to walk on.

Torn Up Asphalt "Road"

We ate our sandwiches in the car and two other caching groups came by heading to the old geocache. Guess this thing does get a lot of traffic. While eating, we can hear somebody shooting round after round. We had read about this general area being a place where guys come for target practice but it is a bit unnerving to be able to hear nearby gunshots but not see anybody.  We wore our dorky blaze orange hats for safety.

Next we drive to another parking spot and on the way pass the guy that was shooting. He seemed harmless enough or at least as harmless as a guy with a gun in the middle of the woods can be. There is an obvious trail to follow and it seems to be heading in the right direction to lead us to the other oldish cache. This walk is much more challenging since there are some reasonably steep sections. But once at the top of the ridge, the views of the surrounding forest and Mount Hood in the distance is breathtaking.

View from Ridge of Mt Hood

After a snack and a breather, we head back to the car. We saw nobody else and guy with the gun had left as well. We make it back to the campground with plenty of time to do some of the prep work we wanted to do prior to going to our eclipse spot. This campground fit the bill but wouldn't likely be one we come back to in the future.