Looking for desert oddities I spotted via satellite images | Solo Desert Adventure Part 2

what is that after a frustrating morning of trying to access a parcel of public land surrounded by private property I finally ended up scrapping my original plan I noticed I wasn't too far from a few random waypoints I had previously marked in guia GPS just some things I'd spotted in Google's satellite view and was curious to take a closer look at first up was this nice little cind cone at the edge of a lava bed now I'm headed out into an even more remote stretch of desert back country to see if I can get eyes on a few more of my [Music] waypoints I don't know what it is about the desert every time I come out and do some solo Treck in the desert I'm compelled to pontificate about how amazing it is to just be out in the open as far as the eye can see in the scent of the sage and the solitude but it's really true it's just such a pleasure to be out here I enjoy it so much such a contrast from the Western Oregon Forest which I love but I think that's part of what makes the desert special is that it's just so different it's just few hours of driving and you get out into just just a whole other world where there's just nobody just [Music] nobody while it's been pretty smooth sailing across the desert floor on this dirt road my route is going to climb me up to a higher plateau and as usual on sloped desert Trails the soft Dirt has eroded away and what's left makes for a rough Rocky slow-going slog [Music] [Music] I see think I can see one of the things I came out here to look at never ever would have noticed it just driving along this road I think that's part of it right there I'll show you this shot and see if you can see it do you see it let me get a little closer and then uh put the Drone up and see if we can see it okay I'm very very close I may even be actually on the edge of it I'm not positive that wind is cold out there so I'm going to sit in the truck and see if we can see this let's see [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so if we look left here so you see those bands those wide swads oh there oh now we can see it there we go see if we get up a little higher here okay you see that now obviously this isn't a geological odity that's man-made but why why now there's a fence line Looks like running around it I don't appear to see fence going diagonally through it I think I'm down here in the corner yeah there's me right there that's huge look at that I mean yeah I noticed that in the satellite imagery and I was like what is that I mean clearly at one point everything got just cut down slice down bulldoze down I don't know and so that's left those marks I can see right there in front of me the Sage Brush and then a thinner area where the sage brushes come back but you know I can definitely see that band going out there but why why a big X out in the middle of the desert like this do you have any ideas at all we are 100% on BLM land land this is public land it drove right up to it there's no signage of any sort that's pretty big if you look at the truck all the way down there in the corner I think I can use the Google satellite view to measure what the dimensions of that are and so I'll put that on the screen I don't know I wanted to take that Road out here along that Ridge and I saw that and I thought well let's just go see what this is just something to come and look at maybe on the ground I would see something that would make me understand but I don't understand the only thing that occurs to me is fighter jets have flown training flights over this area for decades when we were out here in 2020 looking at a 1973 crash site a couple of fighter jets buzzed over us could this have been some sort of navigation marker or emulated Target I don't see anything of significance there at the where the X crosses I'm going to run low on battery here pretty soon I should have put a new one on I don't know I don't know low battery warning yeah [Music] [Music] okay let's bring it on back [Music] this is really some open featureless desert with only the gentlest of Rolling Hills but something else out here caught my eye in satellite view and this one's not really mysterious dry lake beds aren't uncommon out here and sometimes in the spring they even look a little wet in the middle but I've never seen one with a large and well-defined pool of water in it like this the road I'm on literally passes right through this Lake I'm hesitant to get too close to the water but the ground is remarkably solid that's a lot of water for the middle of the desert and the wind is just really ripping across [Music] here it's weird how the water just oozes out of the otherwise dry looking ground and snakes towards what remains of the lake [Music] so at this point I'm just trying to see if I can maybe find a spot that's a little bit tucked down out of the wind these are pretty smooth Rolling Hills and there may not be really any protection to be had at all out here the wind's been coming pretty steadily from the West all day long and so if I could get down onto the east side of some little Hill might feel a little less windy I don't know I've poked up several side roads but can't find anything that gets close enough to a hill to offer any amount of protection the wind just swoops over and down and around so I'm going to keep rolling for now [Music] finally I found a Spur to a site that's tucked up into the east side of a fairly steep Ridge with a much nicer view than I expected to end up with this evening the wind still swirls down in here a bit but overall it is much more calm than it was out in the open while I'm already sunk into the Shadows here most of the desert is still lit up by the Setting Sun [Music] [Music] I still got some wind here but it's not nearly as bad as what I was experiencing in other places and there is sort of a little old fire pit tucked down in here it's a little bit more protected behind this rock and the ridge line up there it's still kind of windy I really don't like making campfires when there's wind even though it's you know it's wet it's green out here I don't think you could catch this desert on fire even if you tried but when it's windy the campfire doesn't do a whole lot of good anyway the wind just blows the heat away that wind is cold I think it's going to be an inside the camper evening [Music] [Music] in the desert the pre-dawn light often paints the sky in a pallet of peaceful pastels yesterday's clouds have completely cleared and the Sage Brush sits patiently in anticipation of the soothing Strokes of sunlight soon to show [Music] fortunately the wind ended up dying down last night didn't rain on me last night and I was able to set up my little table and stove so I can make some coffee make some breakfast this morning was quite cold this morning well below freezing and since there was no wind I actually thought about building a little fire to warm up but I figured as soon as that sun came over over the ridge over there it would start to warm up and I can already feel it when I get out in that sun uh much warmer [Music] last night I had spotted some cows out of sort of the base of that next Ridge over there this morning they were still kind of out there in that same area but uh a little light colored spot caught my eye I zoomed in as well as my camera could and it looked like a horse now I didn't even want to mention yesterday all of the piles of horse dung that I saw if I didn't actually see any horses so I was glad to see one out there and actually as I kept watching turns out there's quite a few more of them out there [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] but I was definitely a little frustrated yet yesterday that my plan sort of fell through but if I had been able to get up into the area that I wanted to get into I wouldn't have ended up with this day to you know come explore out here in the desert I wouldn't have found big X out there I wouldn't have found this amazing campsite and seen that herd of horses up there really just can't complain at all anytime I get out here into the remote Oregon desert uh it's always Pleasant [Music] I hope you've enjoyed these episodes but this adventure is not over today I'm going to head off into another little area of the Oregon desert to meet up with some friends of mine for our annual Cowboy dinner tree visit and then tomorrow I've got a whole other Adventure planned off in yet another corner of the remote Oregon Back Country make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss an episode and thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: softroadingthewest

Views: 15,163

Keywords: oregon, desert, backcountry, back country, dessert, eastern, central, Silver Lake, Christmas Valley, A6, A-6, Intruder, crash, plane, fighter jet, oddity, mystery, mysterious, seeking, searching, satellite, nissan, frontier, pro4x, pro-4x, lifted, 4x4, truck, camper, camping, dispersed, solo, alone, BLM, public land, spring, trip, trek, excursion, softroadingthewest, soft roading, west, softroading, Donald

Id: TeIeU6XBTxk

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Sat May 11 2024