The Real Oregon

Start at Fields and head north to the highway interchange. Follow the gravel road, which tends to be rutted, along the big power line for a couple miles east. Somewhere along about two miles a gravel road heads left. After about a mile it comes to a gate, which is marked with a warning that kids and pets may disappear into the shifty ground. We’ve never actually lost any.

Close the gate behind you and drive on, a short ways, to the old borax works and hot springs near the lake, which sits at the south end of the Alvord Desert.

My favorite things to do in the Alvord, a flat dry lake bed east of Steens Mountain:

(1) Go for a mile run. Drive out a ways onto the flat (you can probably find a rough but passable dirt road down from the highway) and park your car. Then pick any point on the horizon and start running toward it. After ten minutes or so, turn around. You car will have vanished into the opposite horizon.

(2) Put the truck in low/low gear, let out the clutch, and then climb out the window and sit on the roof for a slow autopilot tour.

(3) Something I’d like to try, but haven’t. Tie the steering wheel over a bit to one side, drop the truck into low/low gear, let the clutch out and then hop out and watch the truck make a big, solo circle in the desert. Hope that your knot doesn’t slip and the truck really comes back.