After a flurry of packing everything we owned into a 10’x10′ storage unit, we left Portland at 8:00 pm on June 4th headed for Bend. At mile 37, we were pulled over by Sandy Officer Cox for a non-functioning tail light. I write non-functioning because we just paid a shop $400 to safety check Flicker (our intrepid trailer) including fixing the tail lights. Fortunately Officer Cox was kind enough to let us go with a warning. What a nice guy! We arrived at Michelle’s mother’s house about 1:30 am.
We were up 8 am the next day to meet Michael with the Oregon Natural Desert Association to learn how best to submit Wilderness Study Area data. ONDA uses Avenza which is very helpful in creating and sharing geographic data (routes, spots, images, etc.). We walked around the ONDA office, taking test photos and writing observations, which a short time later we were able to tour on Google Earth. What efficient data capture. When we were leaving remarkably there was Sam’s cousin Hodge waking through the ONDA parking lot!
We were late to depart to Hart Mountain but when we did we were a solid 2-300 lbs lighter after dumping a lot of extraneous items with Michelle’s kind Mom. On the way to Hart Mt. we got lucky and saw the Old Geyser in Lakeview gushing a 30-40′ in the air as we arrived in town. Very cool!
9:30 pm, a solid five hours behind schedule, we pulled into the Hart Mountain campground. ONDA’s volunteer coordinator Jeremy greeted us warmly and helped us find a temporary spot for the night.
