Harney County is a huge, vacant desert county in southeast Oregon on the northern fringe of the Great Basin Desert. It looks and feels like Nevada. Beth and I entered from the north after hiking Strawberry Mountain in neighboring Grant County the previous day, driving the short 45-mile distance between that peak and the city of Burns, the county seat of Harney County. It was a pretty drive following US-395 south as it slowly descends from higher mountainous terrain to lower sage desert ("lower" is relative as the deserts here are still about 3,000 feet elevation). We had lunch in Burns then drove about 28 miles southeast toward the Crystal Crane Hot Springs where we enjoyed the nice hot springs, a beautiful sunset and a friendly camp kitty, whose picture is below. For $30 this is one cool place, and we highly recommend it!

The next morning we started rolling pretty early and headed generally south toward Steens Mountain, but along the way we let ourselves get sidetracked by visiting the Peter French Round Barn near Diamond about 30 miles north of the mountain. This barn is round and was built to help break horses for use on the vast French-Glen ranches in the late 19th century. The barn sits on land owned by the Jenkins family and they have recently built a beautiful new visitor's center off of Lava Beds Road, which connects highways OR-205 and OR-78 south of Burns. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit and had a great time talking to Mr. Jenkins, who runs the center and loves talking about the history in this part of Oregon. Among many things we learned, Peter French was the son-in-law of William Glenn, a wealthy California wheat farmer for whom Glenn County, California was named. The town of Frenchglen as the base of Steens Mountain is obviously named after these two individuals. The Jenkins family married into the French family (I think) and that's how Mr. Jenkins came to be where he is today.

After our visit with the Round Barn we drove on south to Frenchglen, a tiny community on highway OR-205 that sits at the junction with the Steens Mountain Scenic Backcountry Byway (Steens Mountain Loop). The town is pretty well preserved and has some old buildings, a schoolhouse and a basic mercantile with gas. In this part of Oregon, Frenchglen qualifies as a metropolis! We turned onto the Steens Loop, which is about 60 miles in length total and comes out to the main highway about 10 miles south of where it enters.

Steens Mountain is a unique geological feature - a mountain formed as the result of a fault-uplift. It's actually the west side of a fault that was literally forced up into the air, while the east side stayed low. From its highest points at over 9,700 feet, Steens Mountain looms almost a vertical mile above the Alvord Desert floor, which is directly east of the mountain. The east face of the range is sheer cliffs, while the west side is gently raised highlands, with gradients so gentle that one can gain 4,000 feet of elevation while driving and barely know it - which is exactly what we did. Following the Steens Loop, we simply stayed the course for roughly 28 miles east as it gently gained elevation. It was a smooth, seamless transition from lower sage and pinon-juniper woodlands to the highlands of low scrub and rock. The road was in great shape: mostly gravel, well graded and rarely steep. Our dinky passenger rental did fine. Toward the eastern edge of the loop, the road comes to a 3-pronged junction. A left turn went a further half-mile east to a small turnaround, from which we walked the short distance to the cliff's edge and the first of two potential highpoints of the range, a small knob listed at 9,730 feet on the map. The views were tremendous and we were surprised to be huffing and puffing in the relatively thin air despite our short walk!

Back to the main road we took the middle prong and went south about 1.5 miles along a good road etched into the moonscape. This road ends at a small parking area and about a half-mile walk from the second summit contender, this one marked at 9,733 feet elevation. We walked around a small gate and up a service road to a small set of buildings, solar cells and towers, where we paced the immediate ground and called it good. Of the 5 or 6 cars in the lot, no one was up here with us; it seemed everyone else was interested in hiking down to Wildhorse Lake, a neat glacial remnant about 1,000 feet below us from the summit. We could look down and see the lake and make out people occasionally. After taking some photos we hiked back out and started our drive out.

We continued west now on the southern part of the loop. All was well for a few miles until the nice gravel gave way to less-nice dirt road. It wasn't bad at first and our car did fine, but it was clearly bumpier. Then, we started down a steep section of the road hewn into the cliffside! The drop-offs were pretty daunting and questioned our wisdom of driving down this bit of road in the type of car we had. We just assumed the south half of the loop was just like the north half - nice grades, smooth gravel. But we were too far into the drive to back out, so we took it slow and eventually worked ourselves down the mountain and back onto the lower desert floors and foothills. Finally we were back to the main highway, where we went south for another hour to the tiny town of Fields (pop. 11) and where we enjoyed one of their 'world-famous' shakes. We spent the night in Winnemucca, Nevada, and flew home the next day.