Don’t forget, Portland: There is a significant part of eastern and central Oregon that gets very little rain.
In fall and spring, the high desert is a great place to escape the wet gray of the city.
“After four months straight of rain, all I want to do in life is just be warm and have the sun on me,” says Norther Emily of Wild Solitude Guiding. “Starting in March every year, it’s desert season.”
Here are Emily’s recommendations for places to visit:
Two hours from Portland, Maupin is “the closest best weather you can get in the spring and fall,” says Emily. And it offers a chance to be on the river and explore a very different landscape:
“It's super nice and sunny on the Deschutes. There's lots of animals; I've seen bears, deer, elk, bighorn, sheep.”
The area owned by the Bureau of Land Management has limited access, so is likely to be unpopulated and offers something unusual: “There are giant boulders that were washed in on the Missoula floods, thousands of years ago. And so if you know what they are, it's cool to find them.”
You may have heard of the stunning rock formations, which are indeed a good place for hiking and rock climbing. But also consider checking out Gray Butte, where there’s a different landscape entirely, as well as camping and trails for hiking, biking, and off-road vehicles.
Four hours out of Portland, Christmas Valley has what are called lava gardens — interesting formations courtesy of volcanic eruptions from long ago:
“It was a giant underwater explosion of lava. It formed this, like, half of a bowl in the middle of cow fields in central Oregon.”
“It's like a cave without a top. It's very scenic. It's very photogenic. It's super fun to explore.”
If you want some variety, visit a forest of Ponderosa pines that survived from a different era, when the desert was underwater. Also, there are dunes, which are open to off-road vehicles.
