The Old West Bikeway in Eastern Oregon - September 2013

It doesn’t look like a desert, but it is indeed the driest area in Oregon. Rattlesnakes, bears, coyotes, deer, are all in abundance in this area of the Wild West in America. The trail is known as the Old West Bicycle Trail. My brother and I dared to brave the incredible heat and discomforts of the desert in this fascinating corner of the USA.

What to eat in the desert? Along this mountain stream, there were plentiful fish. Nothing tastes better than fish that are fried immediately after they are caught.

The highways here were mostly empty and easy to navigate with our bicycles.

The desert is delightfully colorful in this region. The sky nearly always blue - the ground dry, normally only with small pines and brush covering the landscape. 

The first night we slept under a tree surrounded with thistles and cactuses. The next day was a catastrophe in the need to repair flat tires. 

The beauty of the desert was unfathomable. There were many colorful cliffs rising from the river bed into the blue sky.

My brother, Rick fishing for our lunch.

Time to eat. Here, we found a picnic table outside a National Park office.

Where to sleep? That was something we had to decide from day to day. All we had to do was find a place where the ground was flat. That was not always as easy as you might imagine.

The wanderlust made us want to climb such hills,  but the exhaustion in the heat made such desires nearly impossible.

And the trip goes on!!!!

Everything was dry on both sides of the empty highway.

My brother, Rick, with his life insurance waving in the wind.

It never rains in the desert? Of course it does. This rainstorm drenched the ground but we never felt a single drop. These storms come and go dropping rain that evaporates rapidly leaving the ground as dry as before.

Some parts of the trail were flat and long - like this section of the Old West trail.

This long hill down looked so inviting, but the headwind was so strong that the bicycles could not even roll down this hill. Instead, we were forced to pedal against the wind to arrive at a small restaurant 5 miles away - a Mexican Enchilada - Yummy.

At night, the tip of this eirie tree reminded one of a crying elk. 

The trail was relentlessly long. At one point we were forced to ride 80 kilometers without a single drop of fresh water. Rick’s water filter allowed us to drink from the creek.

On the hills, deer appeared in abundance.

They were always curious about the intruders on bikes.

Uh oh! Another flat tire. Just what we needed. One day, Rick had 7 flat tires. A very kind couple we met told us about the sticker weed and how to use Green Slime in our tires. 

Onward! Ye cattle! These ran in front of the bikes down the road, then jumped into the brush. We never saw them again.

Suddenly, in the middle of the desert, we stumbled upon an indian reservation.

We never knew when we might find an old wild west style saloon and were always happy to find good food at these locations.

We were surprised to find this deer drinking from this stream in the desert..

In this part of the country, it was evident that Obama was not a popular figure.

Are rattlesnakes dangerous? Of course!.But that is easy to remedy.