After hearing about Fort Rock from an old rerun of Oregon Field Guide, I knew I needed to see it for myself. While I was out there, I thought I could also see Hole in the Ground, such a unique name, and a place called Derrick Cave. It had been a few weeks since I was last in Eastern Oregon when I was there last it was free of snow, but a couple of storms came through leaving a healthy amount of snow on the ground.
My first stop was to Hole in the Ground. Right away I was driving in snow; this was an excellent opportunity to test out my truck and how it handles in the snow, so far so good. There were a ton of White Tail deer around; they seemed to be just as curious to who I was as I was interested in them. I made it up to the top of the trail and accurate to its name; there was a great big hole. After exploring for a while, I started towards Fort Rock where I saw a wolf along the way. There will be an entry dedicated to that experience.
Fort Rock was pretty cool; I couldn't help but think what it would look like if it were made into an actual fort or even a small town. The rocks out of nowhere go straight up in almost a full circle. There were a ton of birds nesting in the porous rocks. Evidence of all there hunting was strung out everywhere. As I often do, I found myself there nearly to myself for most the morning until a couple came through climbing to the top.
Something that I keep running up against is that my GPS doesn't tell me about seasonal closures of roads or when roads are closed for other reasons. I ran into both those problems trying to get to Derrick Cave; I tried to get there twice from different directions to ultimately fail on getting there. One road was closed until spring, and the other route was plane closed for some reason. I wasn't too bummed as I can always come back and that I found a pretty cool abandoned building on the way out.
