Day 16 – 9/9/19

15 miles / 302.7 total

It was actually pretty chilly at 7500’ last night, and I hiked in all my layers for a bit until the sun broke through the clouds. I’m glad I have my warmer sleeping bag waiting for me at our stop a few days from now.

About 4 miles of cairns cross country travel remained, most of it fairly nice ridge walking with not too much brush to contend with. I think the entire cairned route would be really excellent if there was ever actual trail built through the Pueblos. It’s beauty is currently somewhat overshadowed by fighting through the thick brush and trees while steeply sidehilling for miles at a time.

We finally made it down to a primitive road and cruised on in to “town”. Fields is “town” in the same way that Rome is, a one-stop store/cafe/motel in the middle of nowhere. Except Fields is far more popular with tourists visiting the Steens and Alvord desert, which means prices are double Rome’s. On the plus side, that have beer than isn’t made by Coors.

I briefly had 1 bar of AT&T 3G cell service on the finally couple miles of paved road into Fields, the first time I had cell service this entire hike. But service disappeared at the store, and no WiFi was to be had. Oh well.

We got our milkshakes and burgers for lunch and inquired about renting a room for the night. This was not in our original plans, but we are just beat. That lack of sleep the night of Denio is really catching up with us. They had one option left, the “rock house.” We didn’t have a clue what that meant, but happily agreed to it anyway. It turned out to be a 2 bedroom house, complete with kitchen. It’s about the same level of upkeep and decor as the rest of the establishments we’ve stayed at on this trail, but with bonus handmade local soaps.

A whole stream of Ferraris streamed into the parking lot to buy gas. It was really fun watching the cluster of the Oregon Grand Tourismo as they discovered only 1 pump had premium gas and they all lined up for it. Something tells me these folks don’t visit places like Fields very often.

Back in the Owyhee Canyon, Dan asked me what I was going to have for dinner in town (McDermitt). I said lasagna. McDermitt was not a town of many choices, and I didn’t get my lasagna. But just my luck, the store in Fields just so happened to have a family size Signature Select frozen lasagna, and we just so happen to have an actual oven for the night. The trail provides.

Unfortunately, to keep trail prep back home simple, we chose to also resupply out of the store here. We pretty well cleaned them out of possible hiking resupply food.