OBCDR - Route 5 section 3

[Toy Man]

June 2002

Just returned from driving our third leg of the Oregon Back Country Discovery Route. Drove a little over 300 miles of back roads in 3 days. Started near Seneca and ended up at Kamela on I-84 halfway between Pendleton and La Grande.

We drove a 4x4 dodge ? ton pickup. The 2 other vehicles were a ? ton Dodge pickup and a Jeep Grand Cherokee. All vehicles had all terrain tires.


Started Sunday 6-23 from John Day. Drove up the hill to Seneca, turned left and drove about 16 miles to pickup the OBCDR at the Parrish Cabin Campground. After a short drive, we took the turn off to Frazier Lookout. Frazier lookout is the oldest(?) lookout in the state, built out of wood and fairly high. I assume the view was great as I guarded the cars while the adventurer types climbed the tower.

Then on to more great driving thru scenic country. Made a brief stop at North Alder Spring, lunch at the junction before you start down to Crane Creek crossing (a VERY pretty place.), up, down and around. Made the 4 mile detour up to Table Rock lookout. Table Rock is a high (7800) point with nice views in all directions. You might not want to drive up to this exposed point if storm clouds are threatening Stopped for the night at Elk Creek campground SW of Unity. (Forested campground with a pretty stream, Toilets but no potable water or garbage containers.) This is the southern terminus of a 60 mile ATV and dirt bike trail. 88 miles this day. A beautiful day with temps in the 70?s and light intermittent rain in the afternoon.


Next day (Monday), we cooked breakfast and then drove into Unity for fuel. Another great day. LOT?s of Huckleberries on (surprise) Huckleberry Mtn. SW of Sumpter. Stopped in Sumpter to see the gold dredge and eat lunch. Also stopped in Granite to top off on fuel. Had a VERY interesting tour of the Fremont Powerhouse. Camped for the night at the Olive Lake campground. Nice campground. No potable water but quite a few mosquitoes. Temp in the low 80?s. 100 miles today.


Tuesday? Off at 8:00. Another perfect day with the temp?s in the 80?s. Our first turn off was blocked due to tree thinning. No problem ? just drove down the road to the next turn-off and picked up the route there. After crossing the N. Fork of the John Day, we weren?t sure if road 5507 was really open as it had a closed sign at the beginning. Turns out 5507 and 5506 are closed by a landslide but 5507 to 5510 to 5507 is open. The drive to the top of the grade via the ?good? road took us thru part of the Tower Mountain fire burn. Strange to see all of the open area with skeletons of the burned trees after driving for many miles thru forested views. On to Tower Mountain and the lookout there. We were going to eat lunch at the lookout but the insect population convinced us otherwise. Nice long drive out the ridge from Tower Mtn., dropped down to Frazier Meadows where we topped off our water at the Heliport. We started to make good time driving thru Frazier Meadows and decided to bypass the route just north of there so we could make Kamela by 5:00pm. I had stopped my route pre-plot on the computer about 10 miles SW of Kamela so naturally this was where we got ?confused?. After few extra miles of ?site-seeing?, we got back on course. One benefit of this ?excursion? is that we passed a wagon train. Looked like about 20+ wagons. Good thing they were in camp and not on the narrow road. Reached Kamela at 4:30pm (115 miles today) and the end of another super trip.

Thanks Leonard and all involved in creating this route.


Dick Hamilton


Notes:

This an easy section to drive. We were in 2 wheel drive all the way. Looked like going south to north is easier. Gas/diesel is available in Seneca (except Monday?s?), Unity, Sumpter and Granite.

Took us three full days but we just sort of meandered with stops, sight seeing and spending about five to six hours a day driving time. We also bypassed a few sections.

My recommendations for OBCDR trips.

Buy the maps. (from www.oohva.org)
Have a good navigator and a GPS.
Have 4 ply or better tires as you will driving on a LOT of rock.
Have a rig with decent ground clearance.
Expect some ?pinstriping?. (Very little in this section.)

I was also running National Geographic?s TOPO! Program on my laptop with a GPS unit. I had pre-plotted most of our course and set the program to automatically track our route and make a waypoint every five minutes.

While the new maps are a GREAT improvement, we still had an occasional point of confusion. The TOPO! program would update our position every 30 seconds so if we took the wrong road, we would know very quickly. This saved us a LOT of back-tracking.

Email me if you are interested in our waypoints.

Dick Hamilton

PS: We almost never see anyone else on these back roads.
I find this astounding but it sure is nice when you are driving them.