2023-04-28 43 -119

Location

In the sagebrush plains east of US 395.

Participants

Michael5000

Expedition

After 2023-04-28 44 -121 and stops in Sister and Bend, I headed out into the sparsely inhabited southeast quarter of Oregon on US Highway 20. After 120 miles or so, there's the junction with US 395, and I turned south there and drove down to the same turnoff I used for Expedition 207 -- not at the hashpoint itself, but where I stopped before the hashpoint to go running. That time, I ran west up Squaw Butte Road, a well maintained gravel lane. This time, I got out the bicycle and headed east up Big Stick Road, a pair of ruts that clearly hadn't had any traffic since at least the last time it rained.

Two and a half miles on the bicycle got me to 1.13 miles from the hashpoint, which was somewhere out there on a plain of sagebrush. Checking the time until sundown and the batteries on my equipment, I headed out. Walking across a sagebrush plain isn't really much harder than walking down a sidewalk, so aside from the curious feeling of vulnerability a city person feels when they can see for a few miles in all directions and they are the only person present, it was little more than a pleasant stroll. Naturally getting to the third hashpoint in one day felt pretty good.

Back on my bicycle, I came up from the downwind side and startled an antelope grazing by the road. I mean, I was fairly startled too, but the antelope seemed to be well and truly freaked out as it disappeared towards the horizon. Admittedly, antelopes probably didn't have a lot of bicycles in their evolutionary environment.

After backtracking to US 20, I continued east to the remote town of Burns, arriving just as dusk fell. After two hashpoints in the forest and one in the desert, I was as filthy as a child after a long summer day of playing outdoors. And perhaps as happy.