Finally after 15 months stuck at home due to Covid we are back on the road again. Now that we are cleared to go mask less outside we decided it was time to get out again.
We had originally planned to leave a couple of days ago, but I have been waiting for my new drivers license to come in the mail. My license expired during the pandemic, and the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles for our non-American friends) was by appointment only due to COVID restrictions. Despite going on line daily I was unable to get an appointment to renew my license. I did get a letter in the mail saying that the police departments in Oregon would be lenient on expired licenses due to the pandemic, so I was not too worried in Oregon. The DMV then announced that you could renew your license on line starting on May 5th. I renewed promptly on May 5th and printed out my receipt which covered me for 30 days. After waiting 10 days for the actual license to arrive in the mail, we decided we could not wait any longer and asked our neighbor to monitor our mail. When it arrives we will arrange to have it mailed to us on the trip.
Having taken care of all of the administrative and logistics we were ready to take off this morning. We picked the Alvord Desert as our first nights destination. Spending the night parked on the floor of the dry lake bed has been on my bucket list for a while and it is more or less in the right direction.
We took a route along the Santiam river that took us thru a major forest fire from last year. We have driven thru forest fires and the aftermath of fires many times. Oregon had a particularly bad fire season and the Santiam Fire was reportedly one of the most severe ever in Oregon. Despite knowing that we were both shocked at the extent and severity of the fire damage. For over 30 miles we drove thru incredible scenes of devastation. The road has a reduced speed limit due to the thousands of fire damaged trees adjacent to the road that need to be removed. The town of Detroit that our son Dylan spent one summer as an intern with the Oregon State Parks was completely burned out. Unfortunately this may be our future, as April and May so far have been very dry and warm this year which may result in another bad fire year.
After a longer drive than I planned we arrived at the Alvord Desert about 5 pm. The Alvord Desert is not a desert (though it is located in a desert that only gets 8 inches of rain per year), but a dried lake bed that is 12 by 7 miles. It is similar to the more famous Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The woman’s land speed record of over 520 mph was set on the Alvord in 2019.
The Alvord is public land and when it is not being used to set world records it is open for camping, driving, landing aircraft and other activities. I have always wanted to try it out. It is in a very remote part of the state at the base of the Steens Mountains. It is about 100 miles to the nearest major town, and the last ten miles to the Lake are on gravel roads, so while the usage is unregulated, there are not a lot of people using it so common sense mostly prevails and people stay out of each others way.
We were pretty tentative when we first arrived and only drove Scout out a short way before stopping and walking around a bit. After we were convinced that Scout would not break thru and become mired in mud, we took her on a drive across the lake bed which was pretty fun. It is amazingly flat and mostly very smooth. There were a few other people playing and we did see one small airplane doing a touch and go so it is true about the airplanes. We were having so much fun goofing around that we forgot to photograph sunset, but we are aiming for sunrise tomorrow.