Unfinished Business in Oregon - Steen's Mountain and the Alvord Playa

I was going stir crazy... and knowing that @mrs.turbodb would be unable to resist a trip back to the Alvord Desert - and for our first time, Steens Mountain - I knew that would be our destination.

It'd be a relatively short trip - four days total - but I figured that even at that, we could do a couple things we'd wanted to do for quite some time:

1. We could get to the top of Steens Mountain, which on every previous trip has been covered in snow. The highest road in Oregon, this is something we've wanted to do for years, since we first saw it while visiting the Malheur Refuge. In fact, @mrs.turbodb mentions Steens so often that it's become a running joke.
2. We could make another run at Big Sand Gap on the east side of the Alvord Playa. Because we had a score to settle from our last attempt. Not that we're hard-headed or anything.

So, it was in the very early morning hours of October 10, 2019 that we piled into the Tacoma and headed south...

Read the first of four parts in
Unfinished Business in Oregon #1 - Hiking Steens Mountain





If you don't want to miss a bit...
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Hoping to catch the stars as they danced through the sky, you may recall that I'd setup the camera to take as many 30 second exposures as it could, until its battery ran out, through the cold night. As morning rolled around, I grabbed a second camera battery and popped out of the tent into the 21°F weather to take a look.

...Only to discover that my second batter was also dead! Eventually though, I got the battery charged and I finally had a chance to check out the previous nights display. Not. Too. Shabby. At all.

Read on: Unfinished Business #2 – Highest Truck in Oregon







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...We spent a good hour - or more - making our way around and over various parts of the Alvord Playa. Our GPS track looked as though a toddler had been scribbling frantically with a large crayon - no rhyme or reason evident in our movement. But, we were on a mission - one that was ultimately a success ... because eventually - in the south west corner of the playa - we found what we were looking for. Three distinct impressions of Jessi's final runs.

read the whole story and see all the pics in
Unfinished Business #3 - We Find Jessi Combs Last Track​

Hope you enjoyed the story!​

 

Hope I enjoyed the story? It really made me sad because I miss that place! I had such a good time taking my wife and daughter there last summer, and I also took my daughter there the previous summer for the first time. Dang that place is beautiful, maybe we shouldn't post so much about it! (JK).