Trip report continued:
Thanks Kyle for adding those pics and the names of the spots. It was down that canyon on the three forks river camping spot that my family did the up river exploring and then we basically floated back to the camping spot. If was fun and the water felt great.
With Kyle's rig having issues he decided to head home. Good thing and bad thing because climbing up the west side of Steen's Mountain is no joke and his truck issues probably would have gotten worse but bad because for me this ended up being my favorite part of the trip. Some parts of this trip were neat to experience but I don't have the need to go back. Steen's on the other hand I'd definitely want to go back to. I stopped several times on the way up to take in the view and get some great pictures. Here's one starting to show the dynamics as we were climbing.
Much cooler up here than on the floor. Snow was still hanging around. The road was pretty well maintained but we only came across a couple of other vehicles on the road, not much traffic.
Got out and took a look around at some of the different higher altitude flowers. Here's one.
Once up on top there are a couple of view points to stop at to get out and look around. You can see Alvord Desert out in the background.
At the next ridge south and at the highest parking spot we took an little hike further out. There is a zigzag trail down but we decided to stay up high and head back to the truck for some snacks.
Of all places I ended up meeting up with an old buddy out on the ridge who I hadn't seen in almost 10 years. He came down from Portland too and was camping with his family out on Steen's and said they come here often. I can definitely see why, wonderful views up on top and comfortable summer weather. After lunch and meeting back up with Ken and Clint we started heading north on the ridge to look at finding a camping spot. Starting to descend we saw this glacial carved valley and got out to enjoy more views. This is known as gun barrel ridge.
We ended up finding a spot in one of the campgrounds along the way that had a little lake. My son's being water bugs had to get in. Yes, that white stuff in the back ground is snow still on the ground.
Enjoying the sunset and it's beautiful colors.
There was a rain band on the horizon just marching it's way across.
The next day we headed down the mountain to find a dry lake bed Ken knew of that had ancient hieroglyphs. This day ended up being a bit brutal. It was about 60 miles of just two lane track out in the middle of nowhere. It ended up getting pretty rocky and slowed us down for a while.
After a long day and passing through the last gate before making it to the lake bed after a couple of detours Clint shut the gate behind me, came up to me and said: "I've got good new and bad news. The good news is that your trailer is still attached to your truck, the bad news is that it looks like you broke a leaf spring." That trail was a beating so I'm happy the trailer at least made it this far. We got creative with some ratchet straps and got me out on the lake bed. From there the family got camp set up and I went to work on the trailer. On trips like this I bring my Ready welder just in case so I busted that out and got to work. I even remembered to bring a welding helmet this time. As you all know welding on spring steal isn't ideal but with the main leaf being the one that broke I had no other choice since I was not going to leave it. Using a chunk of metal I keep in the spares box I patched it together and at least got it rolling again.
That night we enjoyed the last campfire (burned the rest of the wood I was carrying), did a little shooting and saw an amazing amount of stars after things got dark. In the morning we packed up, explored the rocks to look for hieroglyphs and headed out to find a highway to start our return home.
After another 10-15 miles we hit a highway and started back. So far my trailer fix was holding. We stopped in some town to fill up and at the station the leaf broke again. I found some shade, unloaded the trailer, flipped it over and patched it again. There were some rough asphalt roads on the way back but I made it home with the trailer in one piece. Ken and Clint followed for most of the trip back in case something broke again. As of now I still need to fix it and I'll upgrade to some springs that are a little beefier and eventually work on a cap I can latch down to seal out some of the dust. The truck really didn't have any issues. On some of the washboard stretches I found that vibration loosening my rear diff cover bolts. Found that at a stop and tightened them up. Then I just kept checking and tightening when needed after washboard sections. The long inclines on the paved roads did cause me to turn off the AC and slow down during the uphill pulls to keep engine temps in check but on the flats the AC was a dream out in the desert. This is my motivation to change out to a mechanical fan to pull more air but I recently picked up some turbo blankets to help control under hood temps per
@Jason Andrews suggestion/experience. We'll see how those do/help.
It was an awesome trip to see some places of Oregon I've never been to and probably few others have been to, and hang out with good friends to enjoy this experience. The best thing was that my family came along and have some neat memories which was one of the goals of building this rig as a family hauler.