Oregon, as many of you may not know, is not all green forests and rivers and ferns. In fact, if one looks at a map of Oregon, one might be surprised to find that a solid 4/5 of this great state is actually high desert (click on the map). This is the result of the rain shadow that the Cascades mountain range throws across much of northwestern USA.

Now, I live in the middle of the brown. In Bend. And trust me, the farther east you go, the browner it gets.

So all that said, a couple weekends ago my roommate James and I decided to go camping in the Alvord Desert in southeastern Oregon. The Alvord Desert lies along the eastern slope of yet another mountain range called the Steens Mountains (which cast a rain shadow of their own). According to the highly-reliable source of wikipedia.com, the Alvord receives less than 7 inches of rain per year, so it’s pretty dry.

And that’s where we went.

We set out from Bend on a Friday evening and made our way to Burns, 130 miles distant (see map). We were about 10 miles out of Burns when I mentioned to James that we should stop at Safeway and buy some beer for our trip, as I had forgotten to do so before leaving Bend. James, in typical fashion, turned to me and posited, “No, Jack. We need to go to a BAR!” Now, let me give you some background information on Burns, OR…

Burns is an agri-business society in Harney County. The population of Burns is 3,020 people, and it is shrinking. This is in no doubt due to the fact that cousins don’t typically produce reproductively-viable offspring. But I digress. Anyway, so as we drove into town, we kept all four of our somewhat travel-bleary eyes open for the seediest bar we could find, hoping to God that the chastity belts (“It’s an Everlast!”) we had purchased prior to leaving Bend would withstand the, ahem, “negotiations” which we expected from the local fauna/townspeople.

We settled on the “Central Pastime,” which came complete with saloon-style doors. As we ever-so-unobtrusively swaggered in, we were greeted by a vomiting drunk, a quasi-toothless bartender named “Belinda,” four walls covered with big game trophies (one of which was a boar wearing a cowboy hat), and the smell of stale tobacco. ‘Twas a scene that Kevin KIine would have loved had it been included in “Silverado.” We asked Belinda which beers she had on tap, and she responded, “Coors, Coors Lite, Bud, Bud Lite, and Amber Bock.” We wisely chose the amber, which was quickly served along with two food menus.

Now, there are a few things in this world that will provoke a man to do strange, irrational, and potentially fatal things.  Pretty girls, for instance.  Or the promise of cheese.  In this case, it was the delightful spelling on the menus.  I turned to the page titled “Appitizers” and quickly scanned them over.  I couldn’t resist it.  There it was right in front of me, and I gave in and ordered the “Chickin Gizzerds.”

Imagine the texture of a jellyfish.  Now deep fry it.  Voila.  Chickin Gizzerds.  We left Burns with no regrets other than that nagging sensation in your bowels that says “I’m those ‘Appitizers’ that you ate earlier, and I’m going to come back and haunt you in about three hours.  Prepare  yourself, sucker…”

The drive from Burns down through Frenchglen was uneventful, save for a near panic-attack on James’ part at being a little tiny bit inebriated and out in the middle of nowhere.  Believe you me, Central/Eastern Oregon on a moonless night is a dark, dark place.  That said, if you’re driving at 1:00 am through Frenchglen, Oregon on a dark, dark night, don’t stop.  Ever seen “The Hills Have Eyes?”  Yeah.  Just keep driving.

At any rate, panic attacks notwithstanding, we arrived at our campsite on the very edge of the Alvord Desert around 1:45 am, just in time to get a flat tire.  If we’d been 15 minutes later, we might have missed our appointment, but we made it on time and got the flat.  And then decided to fix it in the morning.  That decision was based upon the fact that it was an absolutely clear night with not a hint of moonlight, and the stars were so bright and numerous that it almost seemed like they truly three-dimensional.  Like you could reach your hand up in the sky and stir them up like the bioluminescent algae on the GBR.  So we did the only logical thing that one does in situations like that… we took pictures!!! Enjoy Scorpio, by the way…