South On US-395 To Lakeview

Onwards to Lakeview

I’m awake earlier than yesterday but then I went to bed earlier than usual. I guess I’m still adjusting to the time zone. Breakfast is poor again, but edible. I finish yesterday’s diary back in my room before setting off at 11 am. There seemed limited options on the route today to buy lunch so I drive back to the gas station from yesterday to buy a sandwich. Planning ahead is vital, there’s a lot of wilderness coming up I think before Lakeview.

US-395 S south of Canyon City

Within minutes of leaving John Day and driving through Canyon City the mountains are soaring above creating a dramatic backdrop. Then the road starts to climb, and twist, through the valley as Canyon Creek flows by the roadside. The tree-lined hillsides are delivering spectacular scenery as the road becomes a bit trickier to drive on. There are no 180º switchbacks or adverse cambers – the road surface is excellent again – but the road is constantly changing as it gently climbs. It surges around bends of ever differing degrees of turn.

It would be very easy to increase speed and get caught out by a suddenly tighter bend in the road. But as mentioned on previous trips, the Yanks are very good at signposting recommended speeds for corners and bends coming up. Where they indicate 50, 40, 30 or even 15 mph it really is a good pointer that should not be ignored. Do so at your peril!

I do take notice but in the interests of a decent drive I tend to add about 10 mph on top of the sign, except at very low speeds. 20 or 15 mph means just that. As usual safety barriers on the outside of the road are few and far between. Just one mistake and you’ll be tumbling down the mountain-side to your likely demise…

Over the Strawberry Mountains

I’m driving up Canyon Mountain, the westernmost summit of the Strawberry Mountains, which are a sub-range of the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. But then a pattern develops. The road quietens down, either plateau-ing out or descending. The trees disappear, brush-land re-appears and it’s boring again. Some miles further on, more hills, more trees and more twisty road to drive. And we’re back in business.

US-395 S near Starr Ridge Summit

It was a great challenging drive up to Starr Ridge Summit at 5125 feet. There wasn’t much of a descent though, just back into brush-land. I’m seeing more and more signs above dirt driveway entrances to properties indicating this is cow territory. These are all ranches and there are certainly more cows in the fields here than yesterday.

After an interlude when not much happens, the road starts to rise again with more bends and curves to negotiate. Another good section of road culminates at Devine Ridge Summit, the highest of the day at 5340 feet. Both yesterday and today I keep entering then leaving Mulheur National Forest. It seems to be in bits all across this area. Why it’s not all in one piece I don’t know.

A Bit Hit and Miss

I do now descend quite noticeably but it’s not by much because by the end of the day in Lakeview I’m still at an altitude of 4798 feet. In fact Lakeview is Oregon’s tallest town. So after an exhilarating first 100 miles or so, things quieten down somewhat. To the extent I’m back on a flat, straight and boring drive into Lakeview.

After a stop for lunch at a rest area just after Burns, I join up with US-20 W for a few miles. When I turn left back onto US-395 S alone, it is just awful. Straight, brush-land landscape, no hills to speak of, just miles and miles of unremitting sameness. Boring doesn’t describe it.

I’m starting to draw a preliminary conclusion that US-395 is maybe not a driver’s dream road as claimed by some US websites I read about it on, and why I’m now driving on it. But then I wouldn’t have discovered that for myself until I did drive it, would I? Whatever.

After an hour or so of complete boredom on the road, I see the first signs of Lake Abert in the distance. The Lake is about 15 miles long and US-395 tracks this for most of this, clinging to the shoreline. In late September, the northern part of the lake is almost dry. You only see water much further south.

“Got nowhere to hide” *

At this point, after three days driving, I need to vent about an issue that has blighted this trip so far. The complete lack of turn-outs to stop road-side, specifically to take photos (and/or any other reason).

This is especially highlighted at Lake Abert. Despite it’s lack of water, as I zoom along I see plenty of great photo shots but there’s nowhere to stop. The actual drive lake-side is superb however. The road clings to the mountain-side and follows its shape along its length.

This means it’s constantly changing direction, and whilst generally level, the southbound lane is right on the edge of a cliff. Yet again, few safety barriers are present to prevent me ending up on the lake’s (dry) beach 100 feet below.

There’s also no shoulder to speak of on this side either, so great care is required. At one point the road lanes narrow appreciably for some reason. Oncoming traffic suddenly becomes a bit more of something to look out for.

There are no really tight bends but they are all different, some being much sharper than others. I could generally keep up a speed of 50 mph so it was quite a fast drive. And an excellent one. Just way too short in the context of the day. But after that I’m back on the ‘straight and flat’ routine down to Lakeview.

Into Lakeview

I stop at the Old Perpetual Geyser a couple of miles north of Lakeview. It is a real live geyser but can go through periods of ‘not blowing’. Its eruption timing is also variable. So I didn’t hold out much hope of seeing it in action. I wasn’t prepared to waste a load of time potentially waiting in vain. There was also no-one around to ask if it was even ‘operational’ at this time. I gave it 10 minutes then left without anything happening.

The Best Western Skyline Motor Lodge is on US-395 on the edge of town. But the town is reasonably small anyway. I couldn’t identify a decent bar for dinner pre-trip. So I’d decided to snoop around on arrival and see what was there. My backup was that there was a Safeway almost next door to the Lodge and the room had a microwave, and it was MNF on TV.

However last night I’d found the Eagle’s Nest Food & Spirits bar. I still can’t figure out how some bars just don’t come up on a UK search, but I find them when in town. But then when I enter the bar later I can probably understand why…

When I check-in at the Lodge it’s clear the place is run by white trash who don’t give a shit. The grotesquely obese woman on reception clearly does not care one iota. She just has an attitude towards everyone.

The room is OK. It’s interesting to compare it to another BW last night. Very similar but subtle differences. I saw a sign in reception that said each hotel is effectively an individual franchise under the BW banner. In effect, I guess they can do what they want but under some corporate guidelines.

To the Eagle’s Nest

No shower troubles here, and after settling in and reviewing tomorrow, I set off for the Eagle’s Nest at 7 pm. A true classic dive bar, it’s not the place you’d take your mother. Of the seats available at the bar I chose the one that had the least amount of black duck tape on the seat. There weren’t any bar seats not held together is a similar manner. The clientele, yours truly aside, are not what you might call “upmarket” patrons.

There was no aggro, everybody’s pleasant in their own way and there’s no sense of uneasiness but… if you were maybe a nervous type who’d never been is a place like that before, or you couldn’t ‘read’ the atmosphere, you might be a little unnerved.

So it is what it is, and it turns out fine. Over the course of the evening various local characters appear at the bar and chat with the grotesquely obese – but very charming – bar lady. It appears from what I overhear that she has recently bought the bar and intends making many changes and is very positive about the way forward for the bar. Good luck to her, it certainly needs a bit of a tart-up. But I had no complaints about my evening there.

“Message in a bottle, yeah” **

There is no draught beer however. Despite this the bottled Apocalypse IPA was very good. I had a soup (potato) and burger combination for dinner, which was also very good. I watched some MNF on TV and did some diary. Frankly, I’m not sure any of the reprobates sitting at the bar would have been capable of intelligent conversation, given snippets of chat between them that I overheard, not that anyone tried to talk to me.

It was a night that sums up doing a road trip for. Observe. See life. Don’t intervene or criticise. Watch other people, surreptitiously. Analyse and contrast.

As for the driving today it was an up and down day. Some really good sections followed by some crap. Not as bad as my drive to Lubbock a few years ago, at least there’s generally been some greenery and scenery to look at. But there are no Points of Interest so far, three days in. I haven’t stopped once to photograph anything interesting. There are no museums, statues, few memorial markers of significance that merit a global traveller stopping to gawp at. It’s a bit of a wilderness and when the scenery stops being interesting, that’s a problem. On that sad note, to bed.

* Nowhere To Run by Martha Reeves and The Vandellas

** Message in a Bottle by The Police