Washington’s Pacific coast to backcountry eastern Oregon

Just completed a two-week road trip from Southern California to Winthrop, Washington and a lot of other places between, with the help of some good recommendations by other members here. First part of the trip was family related syuff in Winthrop, after which I went exploring with my daughter for a week on the way back home.

Camping out on a beach at Fort Flager State Park near Port Townsend (1st stopover after leaving Seattle).


Camping at Kalaloch Beach (Olympic National Park)


No body around on entire beach!


Our next campsite at the Hoh rainforest - this was our front yard.

After visiting the west coast of Washington and some family in Portland, we high tailed it to eastern Oregon for some high desert exploing...

Passing Malheur National Wildlife Refuge- a wonderful place for wildlife viewing.


Also where our dog meets her first cow almost face to face...

Then we went to camp up on Steens Mountain- over 9000’ overlooking Oregon’s Alvord desert below with it’s glacier carved valleys.
At Fish Lake BLM campground on Steens Mtn. Good rainbows for dinner here!

Our “private” path from our site to Fish Lake.

On the way to the top of Steens. The smoke from the Ashland Oregon fire storms really took its toll on air quality even out here...

One of the Glacier carved valleys near Steens Mtn summit.

Now, for a fun ride down into the desert off Steen’s Mountain, my Entune GPS gave me this shortcut route to Oregon County Route (CR-202). It looked good at first and hey, it was on the map, so I took it...


and followed it precisely as mapped...

even though it became a friggen cow path with no other tire tracks and was more and more rocky and it finally...


required some road maintenance to drive on it - but thats what kids are for, they can get out and move boulders for you as you drive! This area was beautiful, but I was still surprised though, that this route was mapped on Entune but it was a good enough track for a Tacoma.

But we made it just fine, and the trip was awesome, thanks to many great TW suggestions! It was really a memorable trip!!

 

Awesome! I saw your other thread today about planning this trip. If you took Hwy20 west you drove past the greatest pizza place on earth. Annie's pizza located in Concrete is phenomenal. Maybe next time. I'm a big fan of eastern Oregon. Looks like you had a great time.

 

We ate there and it was really good!

 

Sweet! Annie and Chuck have been making pizzas for 25+ years outa that place. I can't wait till my boys get a little older so we can start venturing out further.

 

I love your back yard, Justin. And everyone was so nice to us there too! We are planning to go back for Thanksgiving already, and even worse, I’ve been looking into adding a Washington and/or Oregon teacher’ s credential to my Cali one as well!

 

Ha! There are so many great spots. North eastern Oregon is fantastic. Wallowa valley then up into Idaho Washington.

 

I spent a few weeks mostly in western and central Oregon during around the same time, drove up after the Klamathon Fire was mostly mopped up, camped west of Ashland (Applegate Lake) just before the Hendrix Fire started nearby, then camped a few nights near Oakridge, stayed a week with family near Astoria (clear, but HOT), then camped a few days with my daughter in Mt Hood NF. The latter was wonderful, and still clear skies, which got progressively smokier on my drive down, which included a stop in Trinity County just as the Carr Fire started. Oregon was beautiful (plus a short foray across the Columbia into SW Washington) but these fires are terrible.

 

Sorry for the late reply, if you use “Quote”, it lets the OP know that someone posted on the thread.

But yeah- we had clear weather until eastern Oregon and smoke from the Carr fire covered most of the sky there and in Nevada near Denio. Then we went by Truckee NV and the Yosemite area fires.

I was bummed about the views from Steens Mtn, no comparison to those directly affected by the fires, but will definitely be back in the futue for another visit!

 

Looks like a really cool trip, well done!

 

Awesome, that kind of trip is on my list.

 

Time’s running out, do it!

 

I might actually hit you up for some of those spots, might try and make it work this summer. Such a rad adventure.

 

Sure, one thing’s for sure, I would have loved to spend a few more days in Oregon’s eastern desert!