I made camping reservations at Grand Tetons National Park for Tuesday, Sept 29 thru Saturday, Oct 3.
I had four relaxing days at Beavertail Recreation Site on the Lower Deschutes River. On Monday, we tried hiking the Old Railbed Trail at Macks Canyon. Unfortunately, a short distance after reaching the railbed, there is a good stretch of loose rock I would have to hike over. It looked like a pretty recent rock slide to me. Anyway, I haven’t had good luck rock hopping lately, so I felt it was safest to turn around at that point. Too bad, I would have liked to have hiked further.
On Monday, we also moved to a more shaded campsite (site 3), which made it easier to deal with the afternoon heat. The temperature also came down as well.
We need to start working our way east toward the Tetons, so today we headed to the Painted Hills area – another suggestion of Taylor’s. I was looking forward to staying at a more traditional campground, but when I reached the Ochoco Divide Campground we found it closed. The Ochoco Forest has signs of recent fires, which was concerning.
I started going through my list of alternate campgrounds. There is supposed to be a city park in Mitchell, OR where you can camp, but I didn’t like the looks of the town. Fourth on my list was Priest Hole Recreation site, so we started heading that way. Soon the road turned to gravel. Dang, I thought I was done with gravel roads for a while. I hadn’t even finished re-inflating my tires to full pressure!
But about two thirds of the way to Priest Hole, I pulled over to let air out of the tires. The last mile and a half to Priest Hole was the roughest I’ve driven so far, but nothing that would require 4-wheel drive. Without the experience of driving to Beavertail Recreation Site, I probably wouldn’t have driven the last stretch of road to get to Priest Hole.
Priest Hole also shows signs of a burn and I was wondering if it was safe to stay. Luckily, there was someone cutting grass at the recreation site and I stopped to see if it was safe to stay. He said, “Of course it’s safe, the fire was back in August”.
Views from the campground:
So, we will stay at least one night and try to see the Painted Hills tomorrow. Since it’s free to camp here, I may stay a few nights. There are fewer trees here than at Beavertail, so I could get hotter here. But, it is also supposed to be cloudy the next couple days, so that might help.
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