Jeep Overland Adventure - Oregon Eastern Desert Pt 1 - Stone Ruins Found!!

[Music] [Music] about nine o'clock in the morning and under the cover of some high clouds I left my home and started heading for the southeastern corner of the state of Oregon I would head roughly south east from the very center of the state to get to the area where I was going it would take me about six and a half hours on pavement to get to the point where I would hit the gravel over the course of that six and a half hours of driving I would really only pass through one other town of any kind of consequence that town would be burns Oregon I would pass through a handful of small little one-horse towns that if you blinked you'd miss places like Riley Hampton and French Glen the last of these little one-horse towns that I would come across would be a place called Fields Oregon in fields Oregon there's a little roadside stop called field station that's the place where I would gas up have my last human contact and stock up on supplies for the rest of my trip if you're ever in fields Oregon I highly recommend grabbing one of the milkshakes from the field station and for me it's always a great last taste of civilization before I hit the dusty trails for a few days after leaving fields I hit my last little stretch of pavement before I would hit the dirt and I wouldn't see pavement again for at least four more days how's it going guys quisiera the Caddy works Channel well I am off on another adventure I just left the pavement I have once again in one of the most remote parts of the state I'm actually following this Creek drainage up and there's a just a little bit of private land right along this Creek here of course it's one of the few water sources out in this entire area out here so it would have been claimed as private land back in the homestead era then it would have been one of the few little slivers of land out here that somebody could have probably raised enough cattle had enough hay to feed their cattle through the winter and actually made a viable of ranch out of but I'm headed for an extremely remote little uh dry lake maybe there'll be a little water in it most of the time that's dry and I went past it one time about midnight something like 12 or 13 years ago and I've always had it on my list to get back to I'm gonna do some usual camp cookin camp set up hopefully show you guys a lot of this country because this is this is one of the last great frontiers of the West out here where I am on this trip and what in the hell is that hang on I got to check something out this is a trip I've been thinking about all winter long so I'm going to be an all-in on road and in country virtually all of it that I've never seen before so that's always one of my favorite kinds of trips is what I'm seeing a new trail new hillsides new terrain and I'm just really liking the looks of this country right now I'm winding my way up through this Canyon really cool rock formations in here nice actually Creek nice amount of water running down this thing so in just a couple of miles up here we're gonna find our first little spot that I had marked on the map to check out and basically all the mark on the map shows is some old ruins there and I couldn't find any information yet as to what they might have been but we're gonna go see if we can find it number one and if we can find it we'll see if we can figure out what was going on there now the little track that I'm takin to get me up close to it there hasn't been any traffic on this year for sure and it looks like very little traffic in recent times at all so this could be one of those spots where just not too many people ever get to and I just saw something out there rock I thought I saw Tim Kim out there [Applause] Wow guys all right I see some ruins off there in the distance they're only about a quarter of a mile away almost impossible to see from here when the Sun goes behind the clouds the sun's low enough in the sky I don't know it's probably got 5:00 in the afternoon I when the Sun peeked out it shines on the side of those rocks that the ruins are made out of there's a even bigger one back up there so we're gonna go check these out it's gonna be a little bit of a walk so I'm just gonna grab some basics to take long with me wow this is pretty cool guys this was definitely a house so let me grab the camera I'm gonna take you guys in this was definitely a dwelling we got a nice fireplace here I can't believe how thick the walls on this thing are out here in this country where there's just no trees for a long ways it's more typical to see these homesteads and things made out of stone and this is pretty typical that it's stone construction with mud chinking in the cracks between the stone just pretty incredible that it's way out here in the middle of nowhere but it is by this little tiny water source and it's probably not a really reliable water source but there is a little spring here so it was probably just enough for them to subsist out here they haven't even had a mantle so there's this board and that board that came out that are actually laid into the stonework and there was probably another board that went across them and this was the mantle pretty incredible the tiny little things like that the little touches that they would add even way out here sometimes just those little creature comforts after just another mile or two down the trail I spotted another side of ruins off in the distance so I decided to jump out of the Jeep and take a short walk to investigate all right got a little spot out of the wind this is really neat to see these this structure is quite a bit bigger than the other one I'm running out of daylight so I'm gonna mark this on the map call it another cool area there's also lots of really neat places to camp around here so this would be a great place to come back to well guys they just stopped to get a snack and this is absolutely breathtaking out here it's just crazy I can barely see the cut of the little canyon and all these hills with the sunlight right now man this is just huge country and what's always so amazing to me is how desolate it looks but how much actual history and stuff there is here right from where I'm standing I can see broken chunks of obsidian worked pieces of obsidian up here so this is an area where the natives actually gathered up here and did their tool making while they watched over this whole valley they could see game moving for well really as far as the eye could pick it out [Applause] Wow guys it is just amazingly beautiful in here and this is what happens to me all the time is hits 6:30 right now and I'm probably nowhere near a place that I want to camp yet but it's just so freakin beautiful in here I just want to see what's over that next ridge and what's down in that next Canyon right now the one I'm in is this red rock and then a little while ago I came through an area where the rock was like layers of basalt and white it's just incredible in here all right it's not the most beautiful that I've ever had but I think in the morning we are gonna have an amazing view and the steam mountains out there hey this is what I got to work with probably the first thing I'll do after I open this up is kind of sweep the back off I switched out some sleeping gear or so I've got my sleeping gear inside here so I'll toss it up in my tent and then actually at that point my bed's pretty much ready to go currently I'm running the Odyssey series heart shell rooftop tent from free spirit recreation I do have 4 gallons of fuel and a couple of max tracks on top of the rack on it and it was fine it was a little bit heavier opening up but because it has those gas assisted those gas struts that assist the opening it was still fine for me to push open and just leave that stuff up there so this first time I've had that much stuff up there so it's nice to know I can still deploy it and these are the front run wolf packs and I get them from Lola Overland they stack on top of each other and they lock together really securely so that's one of the things and then I can also use them first they make good end tables an additional tabletop space around camp just gonna use my optimist crock stove how I'm gonna do tonight is boil some water all right now light fast so this is literally like a 15 minute camp set up this is what I do when I'm crunched up against a light or weather issues or something like that I just set up kind of this minimum camp like this and then it's quick to pack up in the morning as well all right look at that he's this ready light this actual ready light right here is one that I've had for almost three years now and this thing just keeps on ticking and man I leave it out in the rain the snow I'm not recommending you guys do that with yours but it's actually kind of gotten to be a thing with me and I'm just gonna keep using this thing until it wears out I've got a couple other brand new ones in my garage but this one just won't quit so solid piece of kit there ready light from free-spirit recreation then it has four of these removable pod lights on it and these are the lights that I take off and I use up in my tent and then it has a built-in solar charger on the back so in the morning I just leave it out in the Sun and it charges itself back up alright you guys want to see a filthy trash arewe that's the one thing about these is they ride on the back of the rig so they do get pretty darn dusty now he's like mine with a really heavy-duty contractor bag and then I carry a bunch of the extra contractor bags inside the lid and they're kind of a dual purpose item to have around camp - I'm trying to do mountain house meal tonight I've never had this flavor before this is the yellow curry with chicken and rice so hopefully it'll be good they redesign these mountain house packages and now they're shorter so I think you can probably use a normal-sized spoon with them ooh a flavor is good on that all right turn that off and protip set my mountain house meal and the remainder of that bag of boiling water I don't help keep it nice and hot give that about 10 minutes and we'll have dinner wait tell you that's one thing about the high desert is man when it cools off it cools off quick out here I bet the temperatures dropped 10 15 degrees just since it got dark and I'm here in camp all right let's see how this chicken curry does man it smells amazing I'm a big fan of Thai food okay first bite this is the mountain house yellow curry with chicken and rice I'd say that's very nice good the curry flavor is really good it's got a good decent hit of coconut flavor in it it's good as peas in it carrots reconstituted really well the texture is good yeah I think that's a winner for my beverage of choice I'm having a aloevera mango drink because nothing says manly drink like aloe vera mango drink during the day mostly what I drink is water so I actually really enjoy like something in the evenings that has some vitamins that has some Oh sugar in it I'm not a drinker also so it's just kind of nice to have uh something different something that's got some flavor to it in the evenings nice pairing with my mountain house meal well I just looked at the clock and it's actually pretty late that's almost ten o'clock I just kind of sat and chilled a little bit after dinner all right I'm just gonna get myself cleaned up brush my teeth wash up a little bit and it's getting really chilly out here so actually be nice to crawl up in the rooftop tent and turn the heater on for a minute get nice and warm before I fall asleep so one thing I usually always do in the evenings is I do a little bit of map recon so right now I'm on Gaia I actually a really good cell phone reception right here I have four bars of service and LTE so I'm looking at the satellite imagery and mainly what I'm looking for when I look ahead on my Roo is just any kind of points of interest off to the side of my route a lot of times I find things that I missed when I set up the route or I didn't see when I set up the route tomorrow we'll have lots of time I want to cover some distance but it's not a it's not such a huge amount of distance that we can't get through it in the day and get to camp with a good amount of time tomorrow evening morning guys well it's about 5:15 in the morning and making my morning brew and what I like a couple of packets of instant coffee inside a water bottle I'm gonna do two this morning because I sleep that much last night the truth is I actually enjoy cold coffee I like the kick of that nice bitter taste then you get some coffee and me guys get dressed get out there and then we'll get some breakfast but man it is gonna be a beaut four beautiful sunrise this morning so we don't want to miss this wow I am just surrounded by an incredible view out here I've got the Pueblo Mountains over there I've got the Steen's Mountains up here got trout creek mountains down behind me I'm out in the middle of this wide-open plateau out here but it is just gorgeous the sun's starting to come up [Music] this is just absolutely breathtaking out here and there is nothing better in the world than waking up in a place like this just gonna get geared up here start working on breakfast but man I just got to take a little bit enjoy my morning coffee and soak this up [Music] well as beautiful as it is this morning it sure is chilly out here but man you just can't wake up any better spots in Venice [Music] all right so we're gonna make a little southern inspired breakfast this morning I'm gonna have a little bit of sausage eggs and grits so I've got my water boiling so the first thing I'm gonna do is I want to make some savory grits so I'm just gonna do a dash of pink Himalayan sea salt I don't need a lot I'm gonna go in with some black pepper just a touch of garlic salt and some butter and that'll be pretty good for the grits then I'll cook up my sausage in the same pan that I do my sausage in I'll cook up my eggs really quick and I'll have a nice little southern inspired breakfast all right so I've got my grits going here I've got water in with my grits I put all the spices with them and I have them sitting in a bath of boiling water they're just so they keep hot and they keep kind of constituting or puffing up I've got my sausage going here as soon as my sausage is about done I'll crack my eggs into this pan by that time my grits should be done I got a nice hot cup of coffee here so I should have a good breakfast in no time mmm Bon Appetit guys breakfast is served so this is just a nice hearty little breakfast something that I think a lot of people don't think about around here but has a really good filler for breakfast is grits like grits are great in the morning just with some honey and some butter and maybe a little bit of cream in them dad's a little protein to them and just that in and of itself can be a pretty hearty meal you can make them more savory like this where I mix them with a little bit of salt garlic salt butter black pepper and then serve them up with the eggs and the sausage it's a breakfast that takes about 10-15 minutes to make all right had a good breakfast went for a little walk now I'm going to brush my teeth start getting my camp buttoned up got all my dishes done already so pretty soon I'll start throwing the gear in the rig and we'll hit the trail again and see what today brings alright so real quick I just moved my cooler over here to a place where it was gonna be shady for a while while I start buttoning up my camp and as you guys can see on this trip I'm just using this is an Igloo cooler it's not a really expensive fancy cooler and it's not that big and this is a 4-day trip I'm on so I can get away with a small cooler like this for a couple reasons number one because I'm not bringing that much perishable food along on this trip I do have some but I'll use most of it up today tonight and tomorrow morning but there's a couple of things that I do really religiously in order to get away with using a small inexpensive cooler like this number one I always make sure it's outside of my vehicle at night so it can absorb the maximum amount of of the coldest part of the night air possible and number two my rule of thumb is I try to never let the Sun hit it and then just generally speaking I try to keep it in cooler places inside my Jeep I can even throw like coats over it or things like that to help insulate it a little bit but the end of the day if I'm just kind of careful with it I can get a cooler like this to hold ice for me for a couple of days and so then the advantage for taking a small cooler like this as obviously it just takes up so much less space in my vehicle and you know if my normal Overland kit it's not that bad but yeah drones and cameras and all of that stuff and and I'm pretty full on my rig so anything I can do to save room in there is a big help pretty much got everything packed now just gonna put away the rooftop tent and guys this is so simple alright guys we are packed up yeah rolling out a camp and it is 9:15 perfect had a nice little morning walk and now we got a lot of daylight to find some more adventures [Applause] [Music] alright guys we're on the trail so we've got about oh I'm saying somewhere in the ballpark of 25 miles or so to go to get to the area where I'm the general vicinity of where I want to camp tonight and depending on how bad the roads are and depending on what kind of interesting stuff we see along the way that could take us a good portion of the day all right well the elevation got a little lower out here and I got into some of this alkali pan type area so I wanted to jump out and do a quick little walk and I did find some work pieces of low-grade obsidian or basalt so the like a lot of these pans out here the natives were out here maybe in a time when they were still had water on him or maybe just passing through but it's just amazing to come out in the country like this that's so desolate and so remote and realize that for thousands of years people have been somehow eking out a living out here yeah it's very interesting I find quite a few artifacts out here so I could probably find a lot more if I wanted to burn some more time here but I've still got some miles to cover today the day's young but I got a long ways to go or it could potentially be a long ways if the roads are bad you know one thing that's interesting is I found a couple of pieces of grinding stones are like a metate or a mortar and pestle a couple of pieces of things like that out here and then just now just off to my left back there I see some kamas just starting to sprout so maybe what brought them out here maybe there was some wild onion or some chemists or something that grew out here all right it couldn't resist taking a little detour down here I'm intrigued by these artifacts that I was finding on that last little walk so there's this old old road jetting off to the side down here so I'm gonna run down it just a little ways in places it's almost just disappearing but there's enough openings between the sagebrush and everything that I'm able to keep following that I'm just curious to see where it goes so I'll take a little side trip and see how this works out a ways further that track finally faded into nothing and I came to the end of it I decided to take advantage of the natural pause in my trip to take a walk out through that little area the desert this interesting country with the baked flat alkali mud broken up by islands a brush but it didn't take too long before I wanted to get back to the refuge of the air-conditioned Jeep again the winds just starting to pick up a little bit which is actually nice because it's starting to get warm out here back in the comfort of the cabin my air-conditioned Jeep I resumed my journey on towards that lake bed that I'd been waiting over ten years to see again eventually I got into some ancient sand dunes which I knew at one time were the shoreline of that ancient Lake it was a little tricky picking my way through the dunes and trying to find the right track that would pop me out on the edge of the lake but eventually I found it and stretched out before me was that Lake that I've been waiting years to get back all right so I arrived at the lake quite a bit earlier than I thought I would the road was actually pretty smooth getting here so I'm just kind of driving around the perimeter of the lake right now exploring a little bit it's really windy outside so I tried to get a little bit of video outside but I don't think any of its gonna turn out so I'll just tell you guys a little bit some of the things I found out there so a lot of this country way back around 1940 World War 2 time they used as a bombing range so they flew a lot of military practice and training flights across here so I did actually find an old dummy bomb casing or actually may not have been a dummy my guess is it's a dummy because it's not it's still fairly intact but a couple of pieces of metal laying around out there just really interesting kind of typography I love these pans like this and around the edge of them of course at one point they were Lakes so they were just a mecca for different types of activity over the years so it's early enough in the day it's 12:30 so I don't know if I'm actually gonna end up camping here I'm just gonna continue working my way around the edge of it it's a pretty big pan so I'm gonna kind of explore the whole thing and see what I see if it looks like a cool place to camp by the time I get all the way around it I'll camp here if not there's another place on my list that I've been wanting to check out that's just up a little bit further to the north maybe another 10 miles or so so I might head up that direction and check it out alright guys I'm haulin ass I'm going right across the middle of this pan this is always a little bit sketchy because they can be soft even though it's bone-dry on top there's nothing says that that can't be water right underneath the surface so but I'm following where this is where people have traveled across the before and I'm keeping my speed at about 60 miles an hour so keep your fingers crossed there's a couple miles across this - after doing quite a bit of exploring around that old lake bed and crossing the water Japan I still had quite a few hours of daylight left so I decided to continue heading north along the next leg of my journey I'd worked my way quite a ways off the beaten path during my exploring so the first thing I needed to do was find my way back to little more established trails that I could identify on my map in almost no time it always back on my pre-planned route which brings me to a great place to conclude part one of this adventure but the adventure will continue in part two with some more epic trails amazing landscapes awesome campsites and the most incredible stone room that I found on the entire trip I hope you guys enjoyed joining me for part one on the adventure and I look forward to seeing you on part 2 as always I appreciate your support look forward to your comments and your questions and can't wait to see you for the next adventure until then coyote works out you

Channel: Coyote Works

Views: 56,706

Rating: 4.9511142 out of 5

Keywords: Jeep, overland, roof top tent, rooftop, tent, car camping, overlanding

Id: 54uCcSuH2Lo

Length: 32min 15sec (1935 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2020