#178 La Grande, Oregon we stayed at a BLM national forest site called spring creek boondock

As I write this I realize I have said we found a nice boondock quite often going up the California coast till now. This part of the trip was beautiful in a scenic way but sometimes there are few RV places and then if they do exist they are overpriced for what you get. If you demand perfect conditions every night you can always find a KOA or a run-down trailer park. I don’t want either. KOA has all the amenities but is usually 50 to 100 per night. They are usually parking lots and well suited for people who want mostly to sit inside all day and watch a ball game on TV. For this last trek I have seen so many possible places along the coastal highway to boondock but you just have to adjust to no services. I wanted to say it's not only to save money. In many cases, it’s a more pleasant view or surroundings. It's challenging to have no water or electricity but the beauty of RV is we are self-contained.

Back to my story. We found a freecamp.net at a place called Spring Creek in LaGrange Oregon and we stayed there for a few nights.

It was a boondock but designed as intentional camping by the forest service so I felt secure.

All three of us went on a hike kind of up the hill I guess you'd say a half mile but I'm afraid I lost the girls due to tired legs. Maybe a lack of Interest or something but they said we're done and they turned back. I had decided to keep walking good ways and at some point, I decided I wanted to test my orienteering skills. I felt I knew approximately how to do it without any sort of navigation aid like a phone, map, or compass. I knew that we were for the most part parallel to a road about maybe a fourth of a mile to the right. I thought if I went straight or at least what felt like straight I would go a pretty good ways and then off to the right, I would hit the main road. This would be without trails or anything. I just thought it would work out and it did eventually.

I remember looking over to the right and I saw some sort of an iconic cliff maybe 20 miles away. It would be my fixed point of reference as a landmark. I told myself if I kept that to my right, I was going straight.

I used this sort of a navigating method and it seemed to work okay. At some point, it's time to turn right I have no idea where to go or what to do so I just kind of went what seemed like to the right. It spooked me a little as I had walked up a hill and through several valleys up and down again and still no road. Part of me was just a little creeped out. I just felt like at this point all I could do is keep on going. Sooner or later I came across something more like a cat path than a road. I hoped it would turn into something. I took it and it and sure enough it led back to the main dirt road. I felt affirmed that I was a good hiker, pioneering merit badge, or something like that.

There was that one part where I thought I was lost and that didn't feel great but there was plenty of daylight left so that made it low stress.

It was Saturday night and we went to a Mexican restaurant and a movie and we all enjoyed that.

When we were at spring Creek I began to read a sign about sheep grazing. There were some more signs about the time of year where there was hunting permitted. What you could hunt and what the dates were and little by little I started to realize how well they were using the land that we were on. Number one it's a national forest we have to do this to manage our forests and have lumber and replant and this is where they're doing it the right way like a garden that you harvest every 30 years. As long as they've got these roads and places to turn around their logging equipment and cul-de-sacs to be used by firefighters whenever they're fighting fires they figure why not let every day people like India and Randall use them all the time for either free or next to nothing.

So there's hunting also there's sheep grazing there's recreation and forestry as well as hiking day use and just preservation of oxygen creating creatures we call trees. They could have enveloped it in a barbed wire 12 ft tall fence that would keep us out and no one would be allowed to use it. Instead they want everybody to use it and it's free most of the time or five bucks. I just thought it was one of our best ideas to use the BLM land and forestry land for the people not just for special interests. My example might be the people that graze here could say this is my land but they're not allowed to say that. They're allowed to use it for next to nothing leases but it's not theirs. They're just being allowed the privilege just like we are. It just gave me a warm fuzzy feeling as an American.

The next morning the two of us went to a church service and it was a pretty neat little church. The building was circular which I thought was fascinating. It was called UMC of La Grande. I got a big kick out of how beautiful the pipe organ was and I took some pictures. I love old pipe organs. When they did communion, a lady came up with her little toy dog in her left arm and took communion, and then as she passed by, she gave the doggie communion to it was the funniest thing I've ever seen. That was the highlight of my week.

I made a video of the old organ with all the pipes and the stained glass. I wanted to capture how pretty the inside of the sanctuary was. You'll need Dramamine to watch it.

This is a FREE campsite.

Address

National Forest Development Road 21 La Grande, Oregon GPS: 45.357388, -118.312265 Elevation: 3356' Get Directions