Where did we leave off? Oh yes, ...as we pulled out our Kindle Paperwhites and snuggled down in the comforters, I looked at @mrs.turbodb and mentioned to her that if the cloud cover brought rain during the night, we should probably get ourselves out of bed and make a run for the plateau - so we weren't stuck here should the road become impassable. We dozed off around 8:30pm and slept soundly until 12:04am - when the pitter-patter of rain on the tent awoke me from my sleep... Not the least bit thrilled with the situation, I shook @mrs.turbodb awake.…
18 CommentsTag: owyhee canyonlands
It was nearing 9:00am when we pulled out of our sheltered camp spot on the southern edge of the Jordan Craters lava flow. As we started back on the windy road to the south, @mrs.turbodb suggested an addition to the day's itinerary - a visit to a small ghost town in the Idaho uplands: Silver City. It'd mean adding a few hours to our day, but with our only plan being the southernly drive to Three Forks Hot Springs, I figured it was totally achievable. So, instead of south, we headed east - back into the Owyhee Uplands, though along…
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Refueled and windows cleaned, we left Jordan Valley, Oregon - heading west on on Highway 95. Our destination was Jordan Craters - a 3,200 year young lava flow - one of the youngest on the continent. We'd visited Coffeepot Crater - a large, breached cinder cone that is the source of the most recent flows - nearly four years earlier on our very first trip to the Owyhee Canyonlands, and this time we were headed for the opposite side of the 29 square mile flow. There were a couple places along the south side of the flow that I'd spotted…
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In all of our trips to the Owyhee area, we've only ever really explored the western half - the Owyhee Canyonlands. Of course, there's some really cool stuff there - Three Forks, Coffepot Crater, the Honeycombs, Snively Hot Springs, and Juniper Gulch - but the Owyhee area is quite a lot larger than its Oregon acreage. With this trip, we were going to change all that - and then some! Our plan - at least at the beginning - was to hit up the Owyhee Uplands Backcountry Byway, a ~100 mile journey from Grand View, Idaho to Jordan Valley, Oregon,…
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"Let's go somewhere." said @mrs.turbodb after I'd been home just a short time from my previous trip. That was of course fine with me, and so we set about finding a place to go. It was going to be cold and rainy on the Washington coast, so we set out looking for somewhere warm. Now, we only had a few days, so that limited our options - essentially to adjacent states. Oregon was our best bet for warmth, so we started looking for options there - and it didn't take long to fill out the itinerary. Ever since visiting the…
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May 29-30, 2016 With a new lease on life (no check engine light), the trip through Jordan Valley (again) and to our final destination was fun. We saw a ring-necked pheasant and of course 1 million billion cows just grazing wherever they wanted on the BLM land. The highlight however was a cattle grate crossing on the top of a rise where, at 50 MPH, the Tacoma played "Dakar rally truck" and we caught air, much to our surprise (and enjoyment). As we continued to drive, we entered a whole new landscape - green valleys between rolling hills covered in…
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May 28 - 29, 2016 A few miles outside of Jordan Valley, it was back onto dirt roads for 30 miles to Three Forks. Mostly uneventful, we saw many more cows than cars, and we arrived at our destination around 7:00pm. Once again, we were deceived right up until we got there, as the canyon opened up below us, rather than being something we drove into. Coming over the edge, we were greeted by this sight, and it was just the beginning. We continued down, and found ourselves in the most populated place we'd see all weekend - 7 or…
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May 2016 The whole of Owyhee Canyonlands are composed of various volcanic activity. Jordan Craters is the most recent of that activity (parts of which are only ~100 years old) and are a crazy sight to see. Looking at the area when approaching via car, and even more when viewing it via satellite, it looks like a huge lake. In reality, it's a huge (~25 square mile) lava flow, with basically nothing growing in the area at all. At the very northwest corner is the place we were heading - Coffeepot Crater. We made great time, passing a slow moving…
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May 27, 2016. It was just like any other work week. Or at least, any other week where you go to work for half a day Monday; take a 24-hour flight to India at 6pm; work in India for 34 hours; and then arrive back in Seattle at 7am Friday morning after 24 more hours in the air. Except it wasn't. Memorial Day the following Monday meant a four-day weekend, and that meant that this was the perfect week for an extended camping trip. Where would we go? Being May, our normal haunts in the Pacific Northwest were still largely…
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