NF Campground to Eden NF Campground OR
Once again we were up to see the sunrise, made some coffee and grabbed a couple English muffins before getting back on the trail. We were only a couple miles from the campground when we came to a deep washout where a drainage pipe went under the road and it appeared to have been that way for some time. Nobody was going through there so we turned around to find a detour around.
We snaked around to return to the trail and came to a fairly large mountain for this part of the state. It topped out a bit over 4000 feet and the road was entirely made of rocks from fist to softball size. The grade was very steep and we had to go in 4-Lo to get up it. Some washouts made it narrow in places but nothing serious. Beautiful views once we reached the summit. The trail down the west side was gravel, a little steep but easy going. Soon after reaching the bottom we came to Interstate 5 and went across.
There were a couple small towns and a sign for elk crossing, one of dozens we’ve seen on our trip except this time we came to a field with cows and a nice herd of elk grazing. The only animal left on our TAT bucket list is bighorn sheep, maybe on the way home.
The road continued on through flat land for several miles. Glendale OR was an interesting little town, we saw at least a half dozen large lumber processing mills. One of them had piles and piles of burned logs, they had a constant shower of water spraying over them to make sure nothing reignited.
We came to another large mountain but the road up was relatively good gravel. Made it up to the summit and ate our lunch. Finished that and drove a few hundred yards around a corner to find a locked gate and road closed due to extreme fire risk. This time it was only about a five mile backtrack.
After that we just drove along on the narrow mountain roads through dense forest looking for one of several campgrounds that appeared to be on our route. The first we came to was Eden Prairie and only one other camper was parked so we made that our stop for our last full night on the trail. Talking to the three guys camped there we found out that Oregon’s deer hunting season opened in the morning, maybe we should have finished one day earlier.
