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22.7 Miles Per Hour Counting Sleep (Personal)
I don't do these things very often. I can't.
I left home with #2 son, Ethan, at 3 PM Friday. We were on our way deer hunting using traditional archery equipment (recurves, not compound bows). That meant we would need to get within about 25 yards to get a high-percentage shot, a very difficult thing to do.
We were on our way to my favorite area of the planet: Southeastern Oregon. It's remote, wild, beautiful beyond belief, and contains quite a few mule deer. It is also quite familiar to me from having worked there as a fire fighter for the Forest Service in the 70's. I have extreme romantic ties to that part of the state and wanted to share that with the next generation.
The first challenge had to do with geography. We live in Northeastern Oregon and had to pick up #1 son, Seth, from college in Northwestern Oregon. So, after driving half way across the state to pick up Seth and driving most of the way across the state in the other direction to our hunting area, we threw our tent and sleeping bags on the icy ground at 3 AM.
We spent the day hunting, seeing over 50 deer. Two of those were legal bucks technically speaking. That is, they had visible antlers. However, they both were quite small, and we did not put much effort into stalking them.
Midday was punctuated with a trip to the house my wife and I had lived in. It was built for the Forest Service in the 30's by the WPA. A couple of fire fighters were home when we stopped by and graciously let me take the boys inside to show them "our" old house. It is virtually solid wood, located in a sub-alpine meadow 50 miles out of Burns, the nearest real town. I had not been inside since 1979. It felt so good just to rub my hand along the pine walls and bannister and to see that even some of the furniture was the same.
We stopped at a few more of the sites that fueled my memories: Baby's Grave (anonymous pioneer grave with 'Baby' chipped into one of the rocks), Doe Springs (for a short nap), Emigrant Creek, Howard Meadow, Delintment Lake, and Silver Creek (where I had baptized a fellow worker 24 years ago).
We ran into town to get some gas, then headed in the direction toward college so we would not have quite so far to go toward home the next day. Here we set up camp under a juniper in the sage brush on the slope of Glass Buttes. That gave us a chance to see the sun come up over the sage brush the next morning as we scanned the slopes of the butte hoping to catch a buck on his way to bedding down for the day.
Not seeing any deer there, we spent a few minutes picking up some nice pieces of obsidian (volcanic glass that the mountain is named for and which the Paiutes used for stone weapons and tools).
Our serious hunting ended there. We headed back through the Maury Mountains and Cascades (seeing quite a few fire fighters still working on this past summer's forest fires) dropping Seth off back at college. Then Ethan and I got home about 9 PM last night (Sunday).
We saw mule deer, pronghorns, elk, chipmunks, mice, porcupines, mountain bluebirds, ospreys, and even red-band trout in the desert streams. We hunted the juniper and sage slopes, willows along the creeks, and old-growth ponderosa pines of the forest.
Althogether, we travelled 1226 miles in 54 hours. That included hunting, eating, sleeping, and visiting the fire fighter. So, you could say we averaged 22.7 miles per hour even while we slept. I really did not drive much above the speed limit. The truth is, we just hardly slept the whole weekend. I can't do this very often.
However, I could be talked into taking a slower version of this whirlwind trip. If you are interested in the outdoors and would like to see some of the sights of Eastern Oregon, let me know. I'll work it into my schedule.
Warm regards,
Dr. Mark Rhodes, Ph.D.
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