Our Secret Gorge
My husband has around 12 years of contract delivery driving experience in Oregon. He knows the roads here as well as anyone — he’s driven every major road in the state, most of the minor ones, and a lot of roads that most people never knew existed. Every once in a while, we’ll go on a drive and take a detour down one such road.
This mossy service road near Oakridge, Oregon was barely marked and almost unnoticeable from the main road. But at some point in his travels, my husband had noticed it, and wanted to show me where it led.
The Middle Willamette River fork is dammed off to form this reservoir, which we reached shortly after turning off.
We drove about 20 minutes more, followed Staley Creek down yet another service road, and found ourselves in a beautiful gorge. McKenzie said that although he’s seen signs of human activity there (the road is paved, after all), he’s never seen another person anywhere nearby, and therefore he considers it his own. We explored around the creek for a while.
I’ve only seen water this blue in Bermuda and in Oregon.
McKenzie remembered that he’d planted a geocache somewhere in this gorge back in 2002, and hadn’t checked on it since. Whaddya know, we stumbled upon it while we wandered, and we were both surprised at how many visitors it has had over the past 8 years.
There were about 15 entries in the logbook, and lots of new items in the cache. McKenzie had loaded it up with lots of items to begin with, and we’re hoping that the person that took Bridge for Dummies is enjoying the game that brought us together. Some of the entries were from hunters who stumbled upon the cache accidentally. A particularly amusing entry read: “I was worried it was a bomb, so I made my husband check it out.” Most thanked McKenzie for helping them discover this lovely gorge. We left an updated entry and went on our way.
There are places like this all over the country — some of the most beautiful spots on earth are barely known or seen by humans, even when they’re just a short trip outside a major city. Who says there’s nothing left to discover in North America?
