Steens Mountain 2011

In August 2011 my family and I went up to the Steens Mountain for a camping trip. The landscape is just beautiful. Some areas were very lush and green with grasses and flowers, while other areas were dry and covered in sagebrush. 

These are photos I took as we drove around to the different sights. There was a surprising amount of cows that we saw all throughout our trip. 

 

. We stayed for 4 days and during our last day, while on our way back to the camp site, we somehow managed to lose a caliper bolt that holds the breaks on the car. The weather during our stay was very dry and very hot. While we scoured the road, trying to find the bolt, there were big, dark storm clouds rolling in. It rained a little bit then there was some lightning and thunder. We saw the lightning strike off in the distance and soon after a huge plume of dark smoke was rising from the same area. This was pretty far away from us but it’s the closest I’ve been to a wild fire. I think it may have been sagebrush that caught on fire because it covered the mountainside and it seems like a good fuel since the weather had been so dry, the plants were probably getting pretty dry too. I think the term for being lit by lightning is “autocatalytic”. It was cool and scary to see something like that for the first time. Meanwhile we were also scared for the rest of the trip back to the campsite because we never found the bolt, and with no phone service, we ended up tiring the break to the car with string. We drove down a mountain without using the breaks and I’m very thankful nothing bad happened.