September 3, 2010
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.
Photo: Alvord Desert 2003
all text and images © 2005-06 by Bob Keefer
no reproduction allowed in any form without written permission