A journey to the Alvord Desert July 9th-13th 2009 (part V)

This is the fifth and final posting of a five part series on a trip I took with the Pacific Northwest Adventure Group

Monday morning. More like mourning. What a sad day. A return to civilization. Not something I was looking forward to. Though I still had several hundreds of miles of driving to do, I wasn't ready. First off, we headed up and over the hills to a old fire lookout tower, now being rented out by vacationers. Fortunately, when we got there, the current renters were just leaving and allowed us to go up and take a look. Somehow, I neglected to take a picture of the tower.



We didn't stay long since we had quite a bit of driving to do. Even skinny little Keegan could barely fit through the opening for the stairs



Near Long Creek, we stopped to check out an old ranch and a truck parked there that was nearly as old.



In the small town of Fox, we stopped to take pictures of the old church. While it looked good on the outside, a peek in the window made it clear that the church hadn't been used in a while





From there, we hopped back on the highway and made a beeline for Pendleton. After visiting at my Mom's for a bit, Keegan and I hit the road for home. Almost immediately, we noticed a smokey look in the sky. A few miles west of Pendleton, we found a 3500+ acre brush fire, which we watched for a while before heading home.

Brush Fire Slideshow


This was definitely one of the most amazing trips I've been on. It really got me thinking, I enjoy traveling in my jeep so much. Everything else I do is just to pass the time until I get to go exploring again. While chatting with some of the,,, more experienced folks on the trip, who were envious of my young age, I realized I need to take advantage of my lack of real commitments and travel.
My tentative plan is to take a year or so to equip myself and my Jeep to the proper level, then hit the road, traveling around the country taking in the sights and, hopefully, writing about it. Its a bit of a fantasy right now but I think there is no better time for me to do it than now.
I also want to apologize for taking so long to make a blog posting, I've been quite busy with life but hopefully I'll get more opportunities to do some blogging on some small day trips I've taken lately.
-Ryan