Donaldson Crew Adventures

Spring is starting to show itself in many ways- birds, animals coming out of hibernation, grass sprouting and Abbie wearing sun dresses. Some memories from our 4th week of COVID19 lockdown. 

Sunsets

Kelly doing a morning coffee get together with girlfriends ... on zoom

Kevin needed a haircut and not able to go to his barber.

Holly can’t believe her luck - that her peeps are home all the time!

Easter

Hunter is finding animals and bringing them into show everyone.  He also brought in a snake too! 

This week the temps were expected to pop up close to 70 mid week. In addition it’s the end of the school quarter so the kids were off Wednesday and Thursday with Good Friday a holiday.  Since last year I have wanted to go see the Alvord Desert but spring and fall are best for temperatures.  

This week seemed like the ideal time to go!  The Alvord is in the far south eastern section or Oregon. Very remote. Here is a picture of the start of the route off of East Steens Road and Highway 78.  

We got to the Alvord Playa and it didn’t disappoint. What a wild experience. You can drive over the cracked ground that when dry is extremely hard. You will see pictures of water but it’s only about an inch deep. As it’s clay though - not something you want to drive through and get stuck. 

This first weekend of our spring break was supposed to be in the 60’s. Our original plan was to go camping but all campgrounds and dispersed camping has now been closed down too. I wanted to get away from the hordes around the local Bend options so we decided to do a day trip to The Painted Hills in north central oregon. It’s about 2 hours from Bend so my hope was it would keep the masses away. There were people but generally it was pretty quiet. 

Our first stop was the Sheep Rock section of The Painted Hills. Here is a picture of Hunter and Noah with Sheep Rock in the background across from the John Day River. 

From here, we headed to a place a few miles north called Blue Basin. The rocks have a blue green hue to them. I am red green color blind so it wasn’t that impressive for me but everyone else thought it was pretty impressive. 

From Blue Basin we headed north west and stopped for lunch in Spray, OR.

Throughout the afternoon we drove through some amazing desert and mountain scenery on our way to The Painted Hills. We spent the late afternoon and evening exploring The Painted Hills and having dinner there. I brought our camp stove and we ate on top of the lookout.

There were beautiful earth tone colors on these amazing hills that only got richer as the day started to wind down.  

Just east of bend by the Oregon badlands there is a hike called Dry River Gorge.  Today the weather was cool and clear so the boys and I decided to check this hike out. It was only 15 min from our house and unfortunately only accessible from sept- Feb due to nesting bird restrictions at other times of the year. 

A great winter time high desert hiking option. 

The weather in November continues to be nice so we went up to the lava cast Forest just south of town. The last time I was here it was with Hunter and Noah october 29, 2011 the day after PJ was born - probably to get them out of the house. This time we all went as a family.

The lava cast Forest is an area where lava flowed through trees slow enough to surround the trees but not to nock them over. When the trees died and rotted away they left these circular holes and tubes in the lava.

It’s a nice walk that is actually a paved path and flat most of the way for wheelchair accessibility. The kids of course took off all over the place.

Our annual fall trip this year was postponed due to harvest season in my new business so instead of our usual late September timing, we ended up going in early November and the weather could not have been more perfect - especially for November.   Warm and sunny but not too hot during the day and cool crisp evenings.  

This year, I selected a backcountry driving adventure that started in Christmas Valley in South Central Oregon and weaved north on backcountry fire roads eventually existing 100 miles north east of Bend on Hwy 20.  We were joined by two other families this year - the Murphy Boys (Dad Patrick, and son Severin) who came with us last year to Big lake and the Swanson Boys (Dad John, with sons Shepard, and Ozzy).  We had 3 main targets on this trip.  A place called Crack in the Ground, the state champion Western Juniper, and Derrick Cave.    

Previous years:

• 2014 - Sparks Lake, OR
• 2015 - Benson Lake, OR
• 2016 - Tam McAuthor Rim, OR
• 2017 - Deschutes River, OR
• 2018 - Big Lake, OR

After driving south and east of Bend for about 3 hours past fort Rock to Christmas valley and then north we hit crack in the ground.  I had heard it was interesting but it turned out to be the hit of the trip!  A mix of scrambling, canyoneering and caving all in one.  It was way better than any of us had expected and probably one of the top places I have ever visited in oregon.  We spent all afternoon exploring the cracks.  All boys - kids and adults had a blast!

Given that its November and the days being really short, we decided to continue heading north to look for a potential camp site so we would have time to setup, cook and unwind before it got dark.  About 5 miles north we came to Green mountain camp site which seemed perfect.  A great high desert view, and not a single other person in the camp ground besides us.  

We had a fire and told stories and of course had smores - of the gourmet variety with caramel/chocolate and peanut butter/chocolate.  

The next morning arrive cool and crisp to start but quickly started warming up.  We found a good spot facing into a hill and spend a couple hours allowing the kids to shoot cans.  John brought a beautiful wood .22 rifle and I had a .22 pistol for the kids to plink with.  

Late morning we got rolling north with our first target an old water pumping station we had heard about. 

Next we started off to find the oldest western juniper in Oregon.  This turned out to be quite a challenge with the spider web of fire roads that were not labelled correctly in many locations.  Finally when we were just about to give up we found it!

After having some lunch at the state champion juniper, we rolled out to head to Derrick cave.  Less than 30 minutes got us to Derick Cave which turned out to be an amazing very large lava tube.  

On the way there PJ was with John and John let him steer his truck (an F350).  PJ thought he was pretty cool. 

One of, if not the tallest caverns I have been in in oregon.  It had to be 70 ft in spots.

With the day getting late, we put it into high gear and headed north towards highway 20.  The backroads were fun and uneventful with everyone getting home just after dark.  A great adventure through the heart of the central Oregon high desert backcountry.   

We had such a great time last year camping a Little Crater Campground, on Paulina Lake in Newberry Crater south of Bend that we decided to go with the same place again this year.    Unfortunately Abbie was a little under the weather this year recovering from Pneumonia, but we made the best of it.  Some friends from Church - Pete and Dara came up Saturday for dinner which was really fun.

 Around Camp

Kelly and Abbie were down in California, so the boys went away to play for the weekend.  I had picked this book up from Costco earlier in the year and figured this would be a good opportunity to pick out a weekend adventure trip.

Our destination was the Gearhart Wilderness area.  See this map below of Oregon - its in the extreme south central/eastern part of the state.

On Friday we drove after work south and stopped and camped at a campground just off the 97 just North of Chiloquin. 

Saturday we got onto the route - basically a circumnavigation of Gearhart mountain on fire roads.  This was true eastern Oregon back country driving.  Very few people (even though we were in the heart of tourist season).   The driving was beautiful and being a little higher in elevation made for perfect warm days (not hot) and cool nights.  One of the neat spots we hit Saturday morning was an old fire tower still standing and accessible but no longer in operation for what looked like many years.  

After the fire tower we continued on to our next stop Campbell lake where we cooled off, had some lunch and tried fishing. (no luck).

For our evening camp spot Saturday we have a few options but we ultimately chose a campsite called Sandhill Campground.  We had it to ourselves - not a soul besides our group for the afternoon and evening and not even a car drove by.    It had the Sprague river bubbling through the campsite giving us our own private river beach.  A magical place.  (I have heard it gets busy in the fall for hunting season).

The campground also had water accessible by an old fashioned hand pump.  Boys had never seen a working hand-pump so Noah decided he wanted to get his water that way.

A warm, but not hot day for early July so we decided to try a water hole in the desert called Alder Springs deep in a desert Canyon.  north of Bend.  It was a rough drive in and very desert dry at the parking lot so we weren't sure what to expect.  We hiked in and down into the Canyon for a couple miles and found this beautiful hidden spot on the creek where we swam and played for the afternoon.  

The hike into the Canyon

Swimming and playing in the creek

While staying at Black Butte this weekend, we did a half day exploration close by to visit Wizard Falls fish hatchery with Lunch in the hamlet of Camp Sherman.  The fish hatchery was really fun - Felt like something out of the 1960's.  While there we did a short hike along the Metolius River.  The river here is amazingly blue, as its only a couple of miles from its source.