Motocaching Northeast Oregon - 2

We got an early start the next morning but in the wrong direction.  Spray was actually a little tail off our figure 8 which meant we should have gone back the way we came in.  I finally realized this about 5 miles down Hwy 19.  We could have gone that way but it would have been longer and not what I had planned.  No big deal.  So we went back through Spray and stayed on Hwy 19 which turned south at the junction.

Clint at the big winch

I know I’m overusing the phrase “fun twisty road” but that was the case with everywhere we went.  We picked up one cache on this stretch before turning back east on Highway 26 which is called the John Day Highway.  We picked up a couple of interesting caches along the way.  One was a rickety footbridge across the river and the other was a large ammo box in plain sight at the Mt. Vernon City Hall.  It was chained down, however.  We continued to John Day and stopped there to gas up.  I believe I averaged about 55 mpg for this trip which I thought was very good for an 800 cc engine.  We stopped for a cache called “The Stump Dodger Trail” which required a hike in the woods and was very interesting although we didn’t find the cache. It had some railroad tracks and a big winch used to haul cars up I suppose.  We encountered a very large group of cyclists along this stretch which was on a very long hill.  Many were senior citizens and I really felt for them.  They were cycling all the way across the country.

We picked up a couple of more caches at the Austin Junction before heading northeast on the Whitney Highway.  We stopped for another cache at the beautiful Phillips Lake.  Just past Baker City we took Highway 203 which is barely on the map but paved.  It makes a kind of half moon parallel east of I-84 up to La Grande.   It was pretty open country for the first part but then got into the forest and fun riding.  We stopped at an absolutely fantastic campground on Catherine Creek and ate lunch.  There was a cache near here but there was no road where the GPS indicated there should be.  After reaching La Grande we turned north on Hwy 82 which we had traveled the day before in the opposite direction.  This time at Elgin we continued on Hwy 82 which turns east taking us to Enterprise.  We picked up one cache along the way and stopped for gas in Wallowa also attempting unsuccessfully

Unusual - flat, no trees

Phillips Lake

Rickety Footbridge

to find a cache there located on an artillery gun in a park.  Just before Enterprise we picked up a cache at a Historical sign about Chief Joseph’s historic march north which is a sad story - a case of the immigrants taking over the country.

Now we were on the home stretch.  At the bottom of Buford Grade we stopped one more time for a cache but we ended on a bad note not being able to find it.  We continued up Rattlesnake Grade and made it home around 5:00 pm.  We logged 19 caches and stopped for 4 or 5 more that we didn't find.  The motocacher's creed is ride hard but stop often.

21 Ranch

I was so inspired by all those senior riders we saw that I made a 52 mile bike ride with 3,000 feet of climbing up to the 21 Ranch Sunday morning.  My legs were about shot by the time I pulled the Critchfield hill to home.  M/W

Update: It's tough when Blogger doesn't help us with our spelling errors. We added a picture of Clint at the WINCH. KW