Jeep Overland Adventure - Oregon Eastern Desert Pt 2 - Old Stage Stop, Dry Lakes, Amazing Landscapes

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so one thing I love about these lake beds I'm cruising about Oh 65 70 CrossFit and it's just about like driving on pavement it's at the wind now the wind is hella blown out here of all of the desert landscape features that I experienced in my travels one that's consistently fascinating to me are the dry hard smooth pans of the prehistoric dry Lakes that I come across it was easy for me to kill a couple of hours exploring the pan itself as well as the surrounding dunes but eventually I had to move on and start working my way north towards where I would make my next cam one of the things I love the most about extended desert overland trips is just the sheer variety of terrain I get the scene as I worked my way north the wide-open valley that the lake bed was located in eventually started giving way to some gently rolling terrain soon after that the Train started to get more and more severe as they got higher and a pretty good sized range of hills eventually I ended up picking my way through a series of slot canyons to break up over a narrow pass and get my first glimpse of the Big Basin on the other side and that Basin would be the one where I would hope to make my camp that night alright guys I love this area in here but head is still way too wet out on this playa so I wanted to push through and get around the other side of it but I'm just hitting too much mud there's just not gonna be any way I'm gonna make it so I'm gonna have to camp up here on this side of the playa which um is not optimal we'll have a nice sunset tonight but we won't have as nice of a sunrise in the morning and I've actually been somewhat close to this place so but anyway the good news is it's not even 5 o'clock yet and we can probably just whip around over here to the other side of the playa and get us a place to camp all right well here comes this famous southeastern Oregon wind so sometimes things just don't work out the way you want them to I wanted to get across to the other side of the lake where I'd be backed up against that RIM and then I also wanted to explore that because I've never really been to that other side but I got half way over there and there's a whole series of Springs that come out of the hillside and well to make a long story short I got to the point where I just couldn't risk going any further I was into some pretty good mud so I'm back over here to a spot that I've actually camped out before the problem is with this wind it's gonna be a challenge to do any cooking over the fire which is what I was hoping to do tonight so this is the Tibetan l-shaped fire or the Mongols call it a j-shaped fire I think it just has to do with their alphabets being different and how they perceive the shape as relative to the letters of their alphabet but the functional aspect of this type of a fire is it allows me to grill over here nice and sheltered out of the wind and it allows me to keep building coals over here by burning wood so it's a really good way even the wood that I'm burning here is heating the area where I'm cooking in so this will give me a nice hot cooking fire and these really windy conditions and really any bushcraft are worth their salt should be really familiar with how to build this fire pit for the most part some clouds have come in the winds picking up God I see some pretty good clouds coming in out there so I don't know I can't quite tell if they're building up to be a storm or not but I could get a little rain tonight or very least it could be a windy night alright guys well this didn't turn out quite as amazing as I'd hoped but still actually very good not bad I tried a little piece of the steak and it's a team out actually alright just a touch more done than I like but man that was tough cooking without wind blowing but the vegetables are nice and tender and the good news is after a day like today it doesn't have to be excellent food for two tastes good to me but actually that is really good that steaks are quite amazing one of the nice things about this wood that I used out here is it doesn't burn for a long time and it doesn't make great coals so I was dealing with a little bit more flame than I would like but the flipside is the smoke from it is really mild so it actually gives a the meat kind of a nice flavor a little bit of a mesquite type of a flavor I'm sure I say this in every video but life just doesn't get any better than this I've got this amazing view of the Steen's there's one more little range in between me and the Steen's mountain so I can just see the top of the steams over the ridge line on the other side of the this playa from me so the view is just incredible the sky looks amazing and this huge ply out in front of me oh alright I just did a pretty much a complete buns bath right here in front of the fire of course that was way too hot for YouTube so sorry you guys had to miss out on that but man I feel a lot better got all of the trail trail dust washed off of me and I'm thinking I'm just gonna chill here by the fire for a little bit until it burns down and then I'm in a crawl up in the rooftop tent and go to sleep it's actually not super late but but I was up pretty late last night I'm running on probably five hours of sleep or so so well I'll get to try out this 49 Odyssey series tent in the wind that seems like alright guys well I beat I'm gonna hit the hay it's a little bit windy out there actually it's decently windy out there definitely not the strongest wind I've been in so far the tents not too noisy which I like some of them can be pretty noisy in the wind but this one I mean you can hear it a little bit but it's not too bad so and there's not a lot of movement I think it's gonna do alright I just did a little map recon and kind of got my route and everything all figured out for tomorrow so I'm just gonna read a little bit now and then I'll probably just fade off to sleep so that's all for this day guys Kaddi works out I'll see you in the morning for coffee guys can hear this but it sounds like a frickin jet plane taking off out there well I guess I'll get the answer to the question of how well this tent holds up in the wind hopefully it's not gonna do this all night long or that's gonna make it rough getting a decent night's sleep for sure well this wind is just not letting up it's just blowing crazy hard out there I tell you though man I'm really impressed with this audison series hardshell tent man this thing is I mean it's making some noise but it's not even close to what some of the other tents that I've used in the past good morning princesses Wow well I got some sleep last night but it was a little rough man the wind blew and then it even started sprinkling rain which was blown against the tan but nothing came inside the tent one thing is I'm really impressed with how the tent held up in that wind you guys know the drill hi I'm going to have some coffee probably have my first little part of a snack get out there take some pictures into video make good breakfast and get off and do some more exploring today all right I don't mind telling you guys it is chilly this morning it's funny because it definitely didn't get as cold last night but man that temperature is dropping this morning there isn't icy bite to that breeze it's finishing my first little thing coffee as soon as I get done with that I'll start boiling some water make some more coffee then we'll start working on breakfast all right so first things first got some water boiling I'm gonna make up a nice strong cup of coffee and then we're gonna do one of the classic camp meals which is a breakfast skillet this one's going to be real simple I did dice up some green peppers and some onions at home just so I have a little bit of fresh ingredients for it we've got some frozen this time I grabbed these Idaho grown frozen cubed potatoes hello breakfast sausage and a couple of eggs so we're just going to toss that all in the skillet add some spices to it maybe some Johnny seasoning and ourselves a breakfast okay so the first thing I'm going to do here is put a little butter in my pan and then right on top of that butter I'm gonna put some of my peppers and onions now I'm going to saute those peppers and onions just for a quick couple of minutes and then we'll add in the sausage all right well my sausage is browning up made me an iced latte that's amazing and I got myself a cup full of ice right here so I'm gonna make this is my iced latte for the road alright so this is my road copy get in the Jeep put a little hand sanitizer on my hands joenie coli or anything I might have got from handling that sausage [Applause] [Applause] all right so I've got a delicious scramble easy classic camp meal I've got my rise nitro cold brew classic latte and the can right here has my breakfast beverage of choice hmm that's perfect that's all the guy needs out here you know one thing that's really nice out here that I've learned over the years is you don't necessarily have to cook every meal out of all fresh ingredients but it sure is nice to have at least one meal a day I like to have that has some fresh ingredients and then another thing that gets to be in short supply out here is vegetables fresh vegetables so even taking something like a breakfast like this that's basically eggs potatoes and sausage or oftentimes eggs potato and bacon I'm just taking the time to bring those fresh green peppers and those fresh onions to saute and with it really makes a difference in how it tastes and gives you that extra nutritional value god it's just gorgeous here what a view to be eaten breakfast to got a gun tell you guys man that breakfast was incredible it's just too beautiful and to apply it down there's beckoning me so I'm gonna go on a little walk down to the edge of it alright so this is really interesting it's a little pile of stones right here I'm about a half a mile away from the Jeep which is about a half a mile away from this really old track that I followed in here so what is this pile of rocks doing right here so we're down not quite to the edge of the playa I don't see any charcoal although I'm gonna dig around a little bit and see if it was a fire ring it doesn't seem like a likely place for a grave so we're gonna look around see if we can find any more clues that might tell us what this is all right well I didn't find any more clues about what this pile of rocks is but I did find a horned toad which number one is pretty cool but number two tells me that the temperature is warm enough out here for reptile so that means I need to be watching pretty close for rattlesnakes all right well we might actually be getting on to something here here is a flat stone but it just has the look of having been worn flat here from rubbing on it so this could potentially be a grinding stone leftover from the natives I also found this chunk of obsidian about two feet from it so is that pile of rocks a grave is that marking a camp site is it marking a good hunting site it was not too far off of a pretty well-worn game trail but I'm guessing that pile of rocks has something to do with these artifacts right here this is crazy how the ground and the soil totally change down here so I'm where this little kind of wash empties out into the playa and number one it's wet which is crazy but number two there's a lot of salt in the water you can see there's just salt crystals all over the ground here all right so here's another one of these what in God's name is the old fifty yelling drum doing sitting out here in the middle of freaking nowhere god I don't even know how somebody there's something in that barrel I'm not even honestly sure how this barrel would have gotten here except for maybe in a really dry year somebody drove across the playa but again I don't see anything else close to an oak cans this would have been a great spot to camp it could have been some kind of a military camp on a training exercise I did find a 50 caliber shell casing up on the side of that hill the last time I was out in this area but that was you know a mile or two away another one of these mysteries of the desert yeah this is crazy right where I'm standing this is soft we've got this hard layer a crust on the top but it's actually mud underneath well it's getting warm out there hey just so you guys know I did have a couple bottles of water in my dump pouch for that walk and then of course I've got knife and stuff to make fire with on my person that's a good thing because it's a lot farther to the edge of that playa then it looks like from here and this uh light breeze out here and even though it doesn't feel extremely hot out here the relative humidity is so low the air is so dry but it's amazing how much moisture just this light breeze is wicking out of your body so so important to stay hydrated a bunch out here oh it's nice and up here in the rooftop tent a good little cross breeze coming through here I leave this spot man tough to do it it would be easy right now to just crawl up inside the rooftop tent lay on top of my sleeping bag have a little afternoon nap enjoy this spot a little bit longer but we got places to go things to do man there's a whole world out there to be discovered every once in a while it's nice to just hang out and relax in camp but the reality is for the most part I hardly ever ever do that every once in a while I can convince myself to you and really mostly like in the summertime when it's really hot during the middle of the day other than that while I'm still young and I got my health I just want to see as much country as I can someday I'll be too old to put in the kind of miles that I put in now to hike the amount of miles I like to hike and that'll be 100 down and start taking a nap one thing I love about this tent is just how easy it is to stow I just reach up and grab the cover go down as it comes down a tuck everything inside nicely once it's folded down it's just a matter of doing these four latches one two three that's it the rooftop tents all buttoned up [Applause] I still had a couple of high priority objectives for the trip but the first thing that I would need to do is cross that entire Basin work my way out the other side and head up and do it nearby mouth it never ceases to amaze me some of the unlikely things that I find out in the middle of the desert I found myself stopping to observe this little family ducks that had taken up residence on this isolated little waterhole about halfway across that Basin all right so I'm climbing up out of the Basin I'm going up this slot canyon and I'm headed up to a series of little basins that are quite a bit higher elevation now a couple of them I've been to there's probably a dozen or more playas up here of varying different sizes and it's a little sketchy going up in here on my own and this roads pretty narrow but so far it's not terrible the rocks on earth aren't so bad that I'm constantly worried about blowing a side wall out of my tire so I think we're just gonna keep picking our way up here because man it should be absolutely amazing if we get up in this country when I finally finished my ascent broke up over that last saddle I found myself nestled in the high glacier cut valleys of the Sheepshead mountains and most of Central Oregon the terrain is cut by water the rivers and streams over hundreds and thousands of years cut these sharp v-shaped ravines and canyons in the landscape the valleys will typically narrow towards the bottom oftentimes at the very bottom being not much wider than the stream that's cutting through them the peaks on the other hand tend to rise tall and pointed this country is unique in that it's carved by thousands of years of glacial movement the glaciers expanding receding and slowly moving across the landscape creating these why'd you shave open valleys with glacial moraines and oftentimes small playas at the bottom after driving for several hours through the unique landscape I eventually cross the mountain range and drop down the other side the time was drawing near for me to make one last stop that I've been looking forward to for the entire trip it was going to require some walking but I was bound and determined to find one last historic site that had been on my list to see if I could find for years all right guys I'm trying to track down this old stage stop and I see the remains of some structures up there but I wanted to get a feel this should have been a pretty sizeable little community built up around it and I'm about quarter of a mile away from it and saw stovepipe my first sign some kind of an old another clue because there was a stovepipe that makes me think we're probably close to where there was an old building old-style tin can with the lead solder in the base of it all right and just found this actual metal old oil can from Phillip 66 so here's what I'm thinking here so what this story is is this little spot right here is just a little ways from where the stade stop and station and later store was this is a nice flat spot and it's just about a quarter of a mile from there so what I think is I think this was a good place for people to camp just close enough to the store that they could get some things but not in the actual yard in the store so this is fairly common back in the days before cars and then in the early years of the automobile so this road that I've been following would still have been used all the way up into the era of some of the earliest cars and then not too long after that it was actually rerouted moved over Oh in some places a quarter-mile in some places a half a mile to make a more direct route I picked up a whiskey bottle it's not extremely old I think it is from oh maybe like the 50s or the 60s which is interesting because I was trying to figure out how late this road maybe was used until then here's another bottle I think this is a little bit older than that whiskey bottle it does make sense these bottles and it's cool that I'm finding whole ones but it does make sense I'd be finding these bottles in an area where people kind of camped by the station this is actually a horse-drawn wagon of some sort don't know if the cameras picking this up but right in this area here they're just broken glass and porcelain everywhere and some of it is definitely depression-era glass or older and some of it is melted so I'm thinking at one point there was a building here that burned to the ground so this is really interesting this structure right here which I'm guessing was the store have a was a long narrow building it had this just massive rock and masonry wall on the front constructed out of local rock as well as tin with mud and then it had a partial Stonewall along the backside but I think the back side was primarily timber and because I can see all the old Timbers here so the cool thing is this didn't burn the interesting thing is oh there's a square nail right there dang it can't get it out so it's interesting this must have been the actual store this building right here because of the way it's constructed this long and narrow it wouldn't been very practical as a house but man it's probably 150 feet long or something there's a massive big old dead cottonwood tree right there or might be a poplar so this was a small structure right here but man a lot went into building it it's built out of these really thin flag stones it's so hard to tell what it was but it looks like it might actually have a stone floor in it too this was a really solid building here - it looks like probably a house I see you down wooden structure over there so there was probably the earliest structures were probably these stone structures and then in later years when the route got better and transportation got better they would have brought timber in to build lumber buildings and grow the station Wow guys check this out Oh it is this cool old bed frame that's so cool after leaving the site of the old station I continued heading north where I would eventually hit the pavement all right well I finally hit a highway so Liz the highway heading back West to Crane and then ultimately onto burn so I'm gonna go ahead and dump a little bit of fuel in my rig and I'm gonna take this roto pack skin that I have up on the roof and dump this one first because it's easiest to get to so this is that something like 3.6 gallons in it so hopefully this will be enough to get me to bronze which I don't know how far it is but I've got about a quarter of a tank plus there's three point six gallons I'm guessing this will get me there as I began the last stretch of my trip which would be about six and a half hours on the pavement back to my hole I did what I always do I started reflecting on the tread ultimately I traveled around a hundred and thirty miles off pavement I haven't seen another person in four days and I'd seen desert landscapes that range from dry prehistoric lake beds wide-open basin and range topography all the way to high mountain facial cut valleys I visited a couple of historic sites that I'd had on my list for a long time and I saw a bunch of country that I'd never seen before so ultimately it was a pretty amazing trip I hope you guys enjoyed joining me for it I know as always I sure enjoyed having you along I look forward to your comments your questions and above all I'll look forward to seeing you all in the next one coyote works out you

Channel: Coyote Works

Views: 50,805

Rating: 4.9411116 out of 5

Keywords: jeep, alvord, desert, overland, camping, oregon

Id: zVLYvP8pvS8

Length: 32min 35sec (1955 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 14 2020