Hopefulist in Other Places: July 2021

For the second year in a row, we headed to SE Oregon the week after the Steens Mountain Loop Road opened, this time with Mike's sister Marla and her husband Mark.

Last year we camped at Page Springs Campground which is beautiful but can't be reserved in advance and doesn't offer electricity, both deal breakers this year with 'the heat dome'. We stayed at Steens Mountain Wilderness Resort (aka the local RV park) and were grateful for side-by-side sites and the blessed air conditioning in our little trailers; ours is an inTech Sol Horizon and theirs is an R-Pod about the same size.

Fellow campers

We got a relatively early start our first full day and headed about 20 miles by road to the trail head for the Big Indian Gorge hike. The full out and back hike is nearly 17 miles to the head wall and back and includes 3 river crossings each way and a variety of landscapes. We hiked in 3-4 miles, about 15 minutes past the last river crossing before heading back so we could get a peak around the bend up the gorge; it was over a 100° by then and we took every chance to cool off in the water.

The next day we headed back in the same direction to drive the full Steens Mountain Loop Road, a 50+ mile loop that reaches an elevation of 9,700 feet making it the highest road in Oregon. A BIG highlight last year was seeing dozens of wild horses, including a leisurely breakfast on our tailgate while we watched stallion challenges, babies nursing, and yearlings playing in the water. The horses were farther away and in smaller groups this year, but still a highlight.