The Desolation of...Not Smaug

For almost two weeks now we have been riding in semi desert. The temperatures have been in the high nineties and low hundred degrees F. during the time that we are riding and when you're riding on the Interstate at seventy-five or eighty miles per hour, it's just kind of dumb to ride without protection and a flat tire is only a puncture away. Black leathers and high temperatures are hard on a person. Even if you stay hydrated as we do, sometimes the heat just gets to you. And if you are doing a long ride in hot weather it can be debilitating by the end of the day.

 

The journey from Winnemucca, NV, to Bend, OR, was one of those rides. When we rolled out of Winnemucca the thermometer on the local bank read 83 F. By the time we arrived at McDermitt, NV, right on the Oregon border, the temperature was already in the nineties. The highway, US 95, took us along a range of mountains, so while the highway was straight, the mountains on our right were substantial.

 

Mountains along US 95, north of Winnemucca, NV

 



About thirty miles north of Winnemucca, we came upon a highway advisory that told us to take an alternate route because Highway 95 was closed at Jordan Valley, OR. We found out later that there was a large wildfire there. I pulled out my trusty HOG Touring Handbook and we found that the highway was closed well past where we planned to turn west anyway, so we continued on our original route.

 

Nevada is essentially desert and in most places the tallest vegetation is sagebrush and dried grasses with patches of dirt, I hesitate to call it soil, in between. The land is wide open and you can see for miles in any direction. And it is dry. If you kick it up it just raises dust. I can imagine in the old days before roads here, that if a person didn't really know what he was getting himself into, it would be quite easy to die here. This country, although it is beautiful, is most unforgiving, I suspect.

 

It is always our habit to fuel up whenever we have the chance when we are riding through territory like this. It is sparsely populated and you never know when you can fill up again. Places on the map often do not have services and running dry in the desert can be disastrous. We stopped at McDermitt to refuel before moving into Oregon.

 

Most of the secondary roads that we have ridden in Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada have a seventy mile per hour speed limit. That seems reasonable when you consider that these roads are often quite straight, and that there is very little traffic on them. However, when we crossed into Oregon the signs said, 'Speed 55'. We initially kept to that limit, but we soon found ourselves, out of habit, cruising along at seventy mph. And we were occasionally being passed. It was obvious that the posted speed was a suggestion, not a limit.
 

Through the eastern Oregon desert.

 

Fifty-five miles north of MecDermitt we turned from US 95 to State Highway 78 which would take us ninety-one miles to Burns, OR. In our travels through Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, and Nevada, we have seen desolate country, but nothing like that of southeastern Oregon.  In those aforementioned states there are frequently side roads that lead to small communities or whatever they lead to. In this part of Oregon we could ride for twenty-five miles (forty kilometres) without seeing a cross road. That is simply because there was nowhere to go. The cross roads that we did see had signs like Fields 18, later on we saw another sign, Fields 62. Both were dirt roads. Whoever lived at the end of sixty-two miles of dirt road must live pretty isolated existence. The only animals we saw were road kill rabbits. A crow would have to pack a lunch to cross this country.

 

Semi desert in eastern Oregon



 

We finally reached Burns, OR, a place I had never heard of before and stopped in a bar for lunch. The place was pretty bike friendly and the menu even had a picture of a motorcycle identical to mine. I remarked on this to the waitress, and she said that the owner was really into riding and that the photo on the front of the menu was of here motorcycle.

 

We filled our almost empty tanks then carried on west on Highway 20. Again, this land was desolate with very few crossroads. The temperature was well over one hundred degrees F. so we stopped at a little places called Hampton Station for a break. The people were friendly and offered us ice water. We bought ice cream cones to cool off them took them up on the offer of water. The original settlers arrived here in 1910, and to see their accounts of what happened when they tried to plant crops was heartbreaking. Several accounts had entries like. 'Planted 6 acres of barley. Drought, harvested three tons of straw'. Or, 'Planted 3 acres of wheat. Drought. Remainder of crop destroyed by rabbits'. It must have been incredibly difficult to wrest a living from this place.

 

The last sixty miles to bend were through some farmland. It seems that there is irrigation here but the main crop is hay. There are large shelters dedicated to protecting the large bales of hay here and large trucks transport the hay from the fields to these shelters.

In one of the irrigated fields I noticed what I thought was a herd of deer taking advantage of the succulent green grass. However, after a second look, not easy to do at seventy miles per hour, I saw that they herd was actually one of antelope - seven of them. I hadn't seen antelope on the whole trip so to see seven of them grazing in a field close to the highway was a special sight.

On the way into Bend we passed a deep canyon which had been created when a large lake that had been contained by a volcanic berm had broken through the loosely formed rocks and scoured a canyon there.

 

In Bend, we headed to the Harley dealer, Wild Horse H-D, in order to get out of the heat and into a place that was air conditioned. We checked out the bikes and merchandise but didn't buy anything. As we were leaving we struck up a conversation with a guy who had just ridden his 1992 Heritage Softtail into the parking lot. It turns out that he had worked for BC Hydro near Merritt, BC, almost forty years ago and then had moved to Bend to work for the power company there, so he was a bit familiar with British Columbia when we told him where we were from. His lady friend owns a dairy farm out on the Oregon coast near Tillamook, OR, and she has almost nine hundred cattle. All of the milk goes to make the famous Tillamook Cheese. I suspect that this is one very well off woman.

I was speaking to a local guy at the dealership and mentioned that I thought the 55 mph speed limit on a deserted highway with no crossroads and very little traffic seemed kind of ridiculously low. He said that in other states the signs say 'Speed Limit' but in Oregon, they only say speed. He says that Oregon laws are written in such a way that you can drive a reasonable speed on these roads and unless you're doing something really stupid like dangerous passing or excessive speeding, the state troopers are pretty good about being reasonably over the limit. However, if you are stopped and give the trooper attitude, or if s/he is having a bad day, they can still write you a ticket. Interesting, to say the least. A bit like traffic ticket Russian roulette.

 

We did the last twelve miles to Redmond, OR, to our motel. We didn't get a room in Bend because it was almost fifty dollars more so the extra twelve miles was worth the ride. I was so done by the time that we arrived at our hotel, that after a short ride to find a Starbucks, during which Garry and I became separated, that when Garry suggested that we go out to get dinner, I demurred and stayed in the room. Garry brought me back a Big Mac from MacDonald's so I did get dinner , but the more than six hundred kilometres that we had ridden in hundred degree F. temperatures had taken its toll.

 

At the end of the day we were positioned for three days of relatively short rides to make it back to Canada, and out home, sweet home, in Campbell River. It was an exacting day, but a good one.