Tag Archives: oregon

Antelope, Oregon: The town we like to call “Rajneesh” because we’re insane.

This past summer while in the middle of cheating death, I passed through a little dying town by the name of Antelope in the rolling mountains of Eastern Oregon.  Antelope is like any good ghost town; useless and abandoned, but with its own amazing history.

Sure, I may use the term “abandoned” kind of flippantly, but really, if you drive through there you will soon realize that the entire economy is based on Social Security and disability checks combined with stealing from the neighbors.  There is nothing left to market and most of the homes and storefronts (all the storefronts?) are empty. (I know one of the handful of residents is going to write me an angry note about this generalization… as soon as they gain access to technology).

ghost town abounds!
Pretty much what Antelope is like today.

Like many ghost towns, Antelope had a few boom cycles and a more than it’s share of busts.  It lies Southeast of US97 in North-Central Oregon on the narrow winding lanes of state highway 218 in the Southeastern corner of Wacso County.  Its two nearest neighbors are also former shells of their more glorious past. Shiniko to the North is a dead little tourist trap hoping that those who have wandered off of 97 want to marvel at their old grand hotel for a few minutes before they disengage and head back on to the road for their rafting trip in Bend; and to the East is Clarno… Clarno is pretty much just some irrigated fields and bridge over the John Day River. Whoopty doo.

Antelope’s rise began in the early 1860s as a waystation between the Columbia River and the mines along the John Day River and the boom town of Canyon City (near the city of John Day in Grant County).  John Day has been in the national news as of late since “Constitutional” Sheriff Glen Palmer unwittingly got the occupants/terrorists at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge arrested and/or killed by inviting them up to John Day to have a meeting with people friendly to their moronic agenda.  The obvious geniuses these clowns were decided to drive up the isolated 70 mile Canyon along US397 between Burns and John Day in a convoy and were eventually dry gulched by the state police.  Oops.  It turns out that just because you dress like a cowboy doesn’t mean you have ever seen a cowboy movie and the simple tactics employed by the sheriff or marshal in pretty much every film ever. I would also like to point out that while commenting on the Oregonlive website on an article outlining the impending “community meeting” between the Bundy group and the friendly public I totally called the police barricade and arrests #tootingmyownhorn (I don’t think hashtags work on poorly programmed blogs).

In 1862 the Wheeler family settled in Antelope Valley and named the town, well, “Antelope”.  A man by the name of Nathan Wallace built a store and soon there was a livery, and a blacksmith, the large Union House Hotel, and the Tammany dance hall.  Raids by natives were still prevalent at the time and the young town had no stockade the stagecoach runs between The Dalles and John Day/Canyon City were regularly attacked.  When the regular driver refused to do the run the crotchety old owner of the Silvertooth Saloon, F.W. Silvertooth, stepped up to the task (Silvertooth had previously been the stage pilot for the run from The Dalles to Antelope and eventually settled to open his saloon).  The operators were so excited that they told Silvertooth that he could “name his price.”  Silvertooth opted for packages of “Saw Log” and “Battle Axe” plug tobacco.  Whenever natives crossed the rutted road Silvertooth invited them over and gave them tobacco gifts.  The run went smoothly.

In 1871 Antelope became official by obtaining a post office and the population swelled up through the end of the century as it was a natural center to the cattlemen, sheep herders, and miners of the region.  More saloons started to appear, of which was one run by Benjamin Pratt and Ed Gleason.  Rumors began to swirl that Mr. Pratt fancied Mrs. Gleason.  Taking these rumors to heart Mr. Pratt shot his business partner in the head with a rifle while Pratt was unlocking the door to the establishment to open for the day.

The ensuing trial was a joke and akin to the violent nature of the town as the consensus was that Gleason was justified in shooting Pratt, because, you know, rumors.

Later in an interview about the crumbling town in the 1950s John Silvertooth, son of F.W., and his wife Laura were asked about the heyday of Antelope: “The population reached two thousand at one time.  There were three hotels, three stores, and a rooming house.” said Laura.

John chimed in, “Three, no four saloons… Two smithies, and a couple red-light places.  There was a madame and two girls at that one place…”

“Pearl and Flossy,” said Laura, “Flossy was the fat one.  They buried one of them in our cemetery. At first they were against it, but finally they decided to put her in a lonely corner, where she couldn’t do any harm.”

A fire started in the apartment above the bowling alley in 1898 and ravaged the town.  By the end of the night only one building was left standing and the town had to rebuild.  This version was fairly short-lived.

Antelope, OR
The abandoned school of Antelope, OR

When the Columbia River Railroad completed its line from Biggs on the river to Shaniko 70 miles South on September 9th, 1900 the fate of Antelope was sealed.  The entire purpose of this line was to bring sheep and wool from Shaniko to barges and larger railways along the Columbia.  Daily stagecoach runs from Shaniko to Antelope became the norm and the town was officially incorporated by the Oregon legislature January 29th, 1901.  There was much rejoicing, but the railroad in and out of Shaniko slowly sucked the population away.

By the 1920s and 1930s Antelope began to fade into further irrelevance as the automobile began to replace the trains and stagecoach runs.  The waystation origin of Antelope was no longer needed and the town quickly lost its luster.

Fast forward about 50 years and things started to get really, really interesting.  In 1981 an Indian mystic/guru by the name of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (born “Chandra Mohan Jain) purchased a 65,000 acre ranch about 18 miles Southeast of Antelope and turned it into his religion’s world headquarters.  This brought a boom of thousands of his followers to the area.

Rajneesh went by “Osho” which is a title given to a zen priest, or so I have read.  Osho began his career as a professor of philosophy and spent much of the 1960s on tour giving public speeches as a critic of socialism, organized religion, and Mahatma Gandhi (what kind of person criticizes Gandhi?) throughout India.  He advocated for a more open attitudes towards sexuality and was often referred to as a “sex guru” in the press.

In 1970 Osho settled in Bombay and began taking in followers as disciples he called “neo-sannyasins”.  He began to draw the attention of many Westerners as he preached his take on works of religion and philosophy (thanks a lot, Beatles) and in 1974 made the move a little ways away to Pune pronounced “poo-nah”), India where he and his followers built and ashram.

Osho went all out on this endeavor at Pune even writing original music to cater to each and every step in his cleanse and meditation process and mixed many Eastern and Western ideas in his version of the hippy-dippy “Human Potential Movement”.

The years in Pune carried with it reports that the ashram was half Fight Club and half Club Hedonism.  Participants like Richard Price (a leader in the Human Potential Movement) left one of these “Encounter groups” with a broken arm after being locked in a room with fellow participants armed with wooden weapons for eight hours.  Sounds like a blast.

By January 1979 the ashram made an announcement that their experiments with beating the ever loving shit out of each other had run its course and “fulfilled its purpose”, and that it was time to just be a sex cult (that last part is my words).  The business leaders and wealthy of India loved Osho as he made arguments for India adopting capitalism and free markets as a way to transcend the oppressive poverty experienced by so much of the populace.  Osho viewed Gandhi as a “masochist” who fetishized poverty.  I guess that is one way of looking at one of the most successful, non-violent freedom fighters in human history…

As with all religious leaders there was a hefty level of hypocrisy.  Osho preached against Gandhi and his life of poverty and sacrifice, while also charging that Gandhi got off on pain, then required that his sannyasins take unpaid jobs at the ashram and get the shit beat out of them.  In ordaining his leadership Osho decided to follow the example set by Greek/Russian/Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff and organize his management by promoting the most cruel and abrasive members to be leaders of the underclass sannyasins.  He felt that constant conflict created by authority figures would hasten the spiritual awakening of his disciples.  Just about the most stupid logic ever.

Accusations that Westerners were financing their stays at the ashram via prostitution and drug running was ruining what was a lovely sex slave cult.  About this time in the late ’70s religious leaders who opposed Osho lobbied the Indian Parliment to revoke the ashram’s tax-exempt status and Osho now owed the government $5 million.  Combining the tax burden with the constant influx of disciples flooding the tiny six acre institution, and an assassination attempt by a fundamentalist Hindu named Vilas Tupe in 1980, Osho decided that changes had to be made!

In April 1981 Osho went into a self-imposed three and a half year public silence.  Weird, but it’s his cult, he’s allowed to do what he wants.  His normal daily speeches were replaced with silently listening to readings of the spiritual works of Khalil Gibran.  It is important to note that at this time in his life Osho sacked his private secretary and brought in a woman who went by the name Ma Anand Sheela (Sheela Silverman).

Scared that he was about to be sent to prison, or worse; made to pay the Indian government taxes, May 1981 saw Osho make a big play and moved to the USA via a tourist visa that was related to medical care for a prolapsed disc (it’s hard to enjoy your sex cult if you keep throwing out your back!).  For a time he consulted with a few doctors while staying at a Rajneeshee retreat in New Jersey but never got the recommended surgery.  Because Osho never sought treatment Immigration and Naturalization Service ultimately viewed his arrival in the USA as a violation of the terms of his visa.

In the spring of 1981 Osho was 48 years old with a long white beard, he was slightly overweight, suffering from diabetes, his long dark beard turning almost white, and what you could see of his face his face, mostly the bags around his eyes, especially aged poorly.  Osho was a man who looked 20-30 years older than he actually was.  I personally think this gave him the exact look one would expect from a sage, wise guru, yet anyone we to find out how old he was might exclaim, “What?! Holy Christ! You look like shit for your age!” before realizing the words had left their lips.

Osho looks old
Seriously, you’re only 48 years old?

On June 13, 1981 Sheela’s husband, one Swami Prem Chinmaya (aka Mark Harris Silverman) plunked down $5.75 million to purchase of the Big Muddy Ranch and renamed it “Rancho Rajneesh”.  Osho moved in later that August.  The Outback hicks never saw this coming.  Soon thousands of weirdos dressed in red robes were everywhere in Antelope and the surrounding hills chanting and dancing and speaking of the wisdom of Osho.  The ranch he purchased was later incorporated as a town and renamed Rajneeshpuram and a lot of conflict was just about to begin.  Rajneeshpuram was an intentional community, a commune really.  For someone who spent much of his life denouncing socialism, he then built a socialist society–sort of.  Except for the fact that he got all the wealth… I guess that is really just a slave society when I think about it.  Ahhhh… cults!

Conflicts with the locals started right away.  Mostly this was over land use for the former ranch.  The commune would say one thing was going to happen and the do another.  At one point during a local election cycle the Rajneesh bussed thousands of homeless people into Wasco County from around the nation to affect the outcome of an election.  Their plan failed so the cult just released the homeless into the various small towns of the area leaving the relocation up to the state of Oregon.

Osho was living in a fancy trailer next to a covered pool and his only personal contact until November 1984 was with his closest advisers, namely Sheela, and his main girlfriend Ma Yoga Vivek (Christine Woolf).  One outlandish goal of Osho was to own a “Rolls Royce for every day of the year” and his one and only form of mingling with his herd of brainwashed hippies was to drive a dirt road in the commune each day waving to his ardent followers who lined up to see him as he mosied passed in a different Rolls Royce.  I don’t know about you, but if I was a hard working member of a religion and living in a tent, then everyday at noon was told to line up and wave to my leader who drove by in yet another Rolls Royce, I would probably kill the fucker.  Then again, I have a logic center so many thousands of the neo-sannyasins seemed to lack, as they were so happy to see all of their wealth and work dedicated to the once a year use of a Rolls Royce purely for the “wave to the peons” factor.  Side note: I should start a cult…  In the end Osho only obtained 93 Rolls Royces (not the desired 365… what was his plan for leap years anyway?) making him the single largest private owner of the ostentatious vehicles in the world.

Just look at this asshoe and his followers. What were they thinking?!
Just look at this asshole and his followers. What were they thinking?!

Rajneeshpuram had quickly become a full-on city with over 7,000 residents.  It had a zip code, fire department, restaurants, a mall, townhomes, etc…  This was a closed off, private community covering 100 square miles.  That is larger than the city of Seattle in area!  Trying to build a buffer, the Rajneesh also began to inhabit the local towns and Antelope in particular.  September 18th, 1984 the cult had overrun the locals and voted on a referendum 57-22 to change the name of Antelope to “Rajneesh”.  Ha, take that, simple country folk!

osho-roll-royce

One completely bonehead move by Osho was in 1981 he gave Sheela power of attorney.  She then later announced that he would only talk to her.  She was like the pope to Osho’s god.  Later Osho claimed that Sheela kept him in a state of ignorance when the proverbial shit began to hit the fan.

One aspect of the Rajneeshism was that it was an apocalyptic cult.  Osho had been consistently preaching since 1964 that the world was going to be destroyed via nuclear holocaust or “other disasters” by the 1990s.  In 1984 Sheela even announced to the world that Osho had predicted that 2/3 of humanity was to die from AIDS in the coming years.  This sense of urgency begat the creation of a “Noah’s Ark of Consciousness” (whatever that is) to save humanity.

During his years in Oregon Osho dictated three books while under the influence of nitrous oxide administered to him by his private dentist.  You know, all I can picture writing the previous sentence is the crazy dentist from Little Shop of Horrors.  I digress.  Sheela also stated that Osho loved his valium to the tune of sixty milligrams a day.

lsoh-3

By the Spring of 1984 tensions within the cult were running high and contention among the inner circle of leaders came to a head when Sheela was ordered to face an inquisition of sorts.  Osho confronted Sheela and reminded her that his house was the center of the commune and then warned those close to him that Sheela was gunning for them.  Strangely Sheela remained within the power structure of the cult; I guess this is what happens when you groom those with the worst characteristics for the positions of leadership.

On October 30th, 1984 Osho broke his seclusion and spoke publicly for the first time in more than three years.  In July 1985 Osho began his daily public discourses much the chagrin of Sheela who had grown accustomed to being the mouthpiece and central figure for the religion.  In September 1985 Sheela and her entire leadership team bailed on the operation and fled to Europe.  A few days later, on September 16th, Osho held a press conference of sorts where he detailed alleged crimes committed in accordance with Sheela’s orders.  Among these included attempted murder and the largest bio-terrorism attack in US history. Of course Osho claimed that he had no knowledge of this prior.

maxresdefault

Osho was an open book at this press conference and labeled Sheela and her minions as a “gang of fascists” and invited law enforcement to investigate.; and oh boy, did the authorities investigate.  Many of the crimes were alleged to have happened in 1984 before Osho broke his public silence.

blvce1wem8cxseu32z6z

Allegedly Sheela tried to murder Osho’s private physician and his girlfriend, and had also wiretapped and bugged most of the camp including Osho’s home and the homes and offices of people who lived outside of the Rajneeshpuram community.

After being denied building permits by the county the Rajneesh hatched a plan to take control of the Wasco County government.  This was a multi-pronged attack and begat the action of where they began to import thousands of homeless.  They called it their “Share a Home” program and attempted to register them to vote and have them vote for Rajneesh candidates.  The county clerk countered this attempt by requiring people registering to vote to prove their qualifications to do so.  I’ll be honest, I don’t know what that means, sounds kind of Jim Crow to me, but this case of disenfranchisement may have saved Wasco County for years to come.

The main plan of assault on Wasco County was much more sinister and involved attempting to incapacitate the main voting block of the county who lived in The Dalles.  Sometime between the end of August 1984 and the beginning of October 1984 operatives of the Rajneesh sprinkled salmonella culture over the salad bars of at least ten restaurants in The Dalles, the county seat of Wasco County, in hopes of affecting the outcome of the local county elections where the Rajneesh had been running their own candidates.  751 people were infected, at least 45 hospitalized, and thankfully no one died.  This was the first instance of bioterror in US history and to this date the single largest event of its kind the United States has ever experienced.

This wasn’t limited to just salad bars.  The Rajneesh fed two visiting county commissioners water tainted with salmonella hospitalizing both.  They spread salmonella on doorknobs and urinal flush handles at the courthouse.  They even had planned to poison the city’s water supply, but scratched that plan at the last minute.

The outbreak of salmonella prompted investigations and it was basically an impotent shrug of blame that placed the fault of the largest localized salmonella outbreak in US history on “poor food handling”.

February 28, 1985 Congressman James Weaver wasn’t buying the official investigation and stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and accused the Rajneesh of poisoning the people of The Dalles.  It wasn’t until Osho’s press conference seven months later did he admit members of his cult were responsible.

The group also had plans to assassinate the US attorney for Oregon.  Sometime in the winter of 1984/1985 the Oregon State Attorney General launched an investigation and executed search warrants on the Rajneesh discovering the exact strains of salmonella in a medical research facility owned by the Rajneesh.

Oregon17

The investigations later revealed that the Rajneesh had not limited their attacks to The Dalles but had also attempted to murder a county judge,  the Jefferson County district attorney, and had poisoned the food supply in locations in Salem, Portland and other Oregon cities; even the salad bar at the nursing home of the Mid-Columbia Medical Center!

During the investigations Sheela made her tapes of the bugged conversations available to the feds as part of a plea deal.  Much of this evidence was sealed and I am personally really curious to hear what was on those tapes.  One of Osho’s disciples testified in court that Sheela had played tapes where Osho had called for some of the sannyasins to be murdered to strengthen the resolve of those who were on the fence about violence for the cause.  To this day I really have no clue as to what their “cause” may have been.   They had a sex cult, why ruin a good sex cult with murder?  Anyway, this is what Ma Ava (Ava Avalos) had to say in court: “She came back to the meeting and […] began to play the tape. It was a little hard to hear what he was saying. […] And the gist of Bhagwan’s response, yes, it was going to be necessary to kill people to stay in Oregon. And that actually killing people wasn’t such a bad thing. And actually Hitler was a great man, although he could not say that publicly because nobody would understand that. Hitler had great vision.” 

Sheela then took this conversation literally and tried to murder Osho’s girlfriend and his personal physician.  After hearing the tapes a grand jury indicted Osho and several of his followers on 35 counts of violating immigration law.

Law enforcement feared that an armed standoff might be imminent when Osho and his closest advisors fled Oregon via a private Learjet and was arrested the next day, October 28th 1985, while refueling in North Carolina.  In Osho’s possession was $58,000 in cash and over a $1 million in jewelry and watches (see: “How to Launder Money“).  They were on their way to Bermuda to avoid prosecution.

The same day in West Germany Sheela and an accomplice were arrested and extradited to the USA for trial. They were convicted for attempted murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.  They served two and half years.  They got off easy.

Osho plead in court to immigration fraud and arranging sham marriages for his followers to obtain residency in the US.  He was given a 10 year suspended sentence, fined $400,000 and deported back to India.

busted!
Osho and Sheela as seen in their mug shots.

A week after his arrest, the area was completely abandoned by the Rajneesh and a new vote was held that reinstated the name of Antelope for the town, this time by a vote of 34-0.

Osho returned to India and experienced a hero’s welcome at first and spent his first few months bad mouthing America, referring to the United States as a “monster” who needed to be “put in its place.”  Osho’s Indian stay only lasted six weeks when the non-Indians in his entourage had their visas revoked, so he moved the party to Nepal, then got booted and moved to Crete where he made it a few days before he was arrested and deported again.  Then it was onward to Geneva, Stockholm, and London, each time his entry to the nations denied.  Osho then attempted to fly to Canada but was refused the right to land and the plane was forced to turn around to land in Shannon, Ireland where they were allowed to stay for two weeks at hotel in Limerick provided Osho didn’t go out or give talks.

The good news for Osho was that he was awarded a Uruguayan identity card and given a one year temporary residency.  The party then flew to Madrid to refuel where the plane was surrounded by elite police and he was not allowed to deplane, got to spend one night in Dakar, and then made it to Montevideo, Uruguay where the group set up shop in a house and Osho began his gig of making speeches all the way until June 19th, 1986 when the government abruptly told Osho and his crew to get the fuck out of the country.

Osho had arranged a two week visa in Jamaica but when they landed the Jamaican police gave them twelve hours to leave the island.  After a refueling stop once again in Madrid, Osho returned to Bombay India.  In November 1987 he decide that the ashram in Pune was the way to go and began leading his flock once again.  His health had taken a turn for the worse and he accused the US government of poisoning him via radioactive isotopes, but most medical professionals think he probably had contracted AIDS being that he was the leader of a sex cult during the ’80s and all.

Osho gave his last public address April 1989 and began to wither from that point on.  He accused the leadership of black magic and investigations by trusted disciples turned up no leads.  Osho’s heart went puny-pop January 19th, 1990 at age 58.  He was cremated and his ashes rest in his bedroom at the ashram.  A plaque reads, “OSHO. Never Born, Never Died. Only Visited this Planet Earth between 11 Dec 1931 – 19 Jan 1990.”

During this time life in Antelope returned to normal, in that not much happened.  A plaque was mounted outside the post office commemorating the resistance to the “Rajneesh Invasion”, and the town continues to wither and die today!

OSHO is gone, let's plaque!
The plaque celebrating the end to the “invasion”.

Today the former Big Muddy Ranch/former Rajneeshpuram, is now the Washington Family Ranch owned and operated by the Young Life Ministries.  Osho’s former private airfield is now the Big Muddy Airport.  I encourage you to check out the weird videos on YouTube and read up more on where his followers went.  Strange group, the lot of them!  The cult is alive and well today and I even see friends who don’t know any better throw up an OSHO quote on their Facebook wall every now and again.

Sometimes You have to Go Home Just So You can Come Back Again!

Saturday was my last full day in the Black Hills.  Jesse and I cleaned some of the cabins at the lodge and then plopped ourselves poolside at the rec center in Spearfish.  I love that freaking pool.  Every community and neighborhood in America should have a rec center like Spearfish’s.  After some unhealthy amounts of sun it was time for some burritos at Barbacoa’s (freaking delicious!) where we happened into Jesse’s cousin Micheala who was grabbing a last bite to eat before she headed to California for camping.  I was glad to have the chance to say goodbye.

Inside Barbacoa’s also just happened to be Micheala’s mother who did not know her daughter was in the parking lot.  Strange coincidences.  Micheala’s mother is hilarious and Jesse and I had a nice lunch chatting with her.

From there we hoped into the grandmamobile and drove out beyond a the cowboy town of Belle Fouche to catch the last day of The Stone House Saloon.  This is a little joint operated by a rancher and his family that is only open one week a year during Rally.  It’s an old, bombed-out homesteader’s stone cabin.  Inside the cabin is pealing and covered in “was heres” graffiti.  Outside there is a BBQ and bar and about 50 giant wood cable spools for tables.  Suspended above the spools is jungle netting like MASH unit might have had during ‘Nam for shade.

Jesse purchased a bloody mary and I got a Sprite and we went about investigating the place.  I immediately noticed an older woman and her energetic little jack russell terrier seated on a log bench, so I moseyed over to pet the dog and strike up a conversation.  She was the wife of a rancher from Montana and always came down for Rally.  The dog was six months old and just stupid with energy, bouncing around like an idiot trying to eat every bug within snapping distance.  Our conversation didn’t make it very far through pleasantries before she wanted to be sure I was one of the “good ones”.

Upon learning that I was a prospector and geologist she was keen to know if I was going to vote the “right way” in November.  I told her delicately that I was confident that I was going to vote the “right way”, but that she and I probably had different views as to what the “right way” was.  Then she started making me a little uncomfortable after a diatribe on the Keystone XL pipeline started getting racist when she began complaining about how all those “other people” were ruining a pure Norwegian population up in the Bakken.  The Bakken is the area where there is thought to be upwards of 400 billion barrels of oil trapped in ultra-tough dolomite in Northwestern North Dakota; thousands of Americans of all races in need of work have been flooding the state in recent years.  I was going to brush away a fly I observed that was having dinner on a scabbed over cut on her forearm, but I decided against it and viewed the little bug as a soldier in the ongoing war against assholes.  Eat and grow fat on the evil racist woman, little fly!

I excused myself from the racist and her little dog just as a thundershower started to move in.  The camo-netting did not hide me from the rain so I investigated the dilapidated stone ruins which still had a roof.  Before I had the chance to go far inside Jesse texted and asked me to meet her at the back of the house.  She was seated with her feet dangling out of the second floor window and wanted me to take a photograph of her.  It’s a good picture.  Then I got to go inside.  In Seattle such a ruin as this would smell damp with pee.  In the dry clime of South Dakota we could only, and barely, detect the slightest aged pee.  One one of the tagged walls I found a tag that was circled on the slope of the ceiling of an upstairs bedroom that read, “Jim and Maryanne, Sturgis 1998”.  Inside the circle was every year since (except 2009) written in different ink.  That is a cute way to mark a tradition.  I like that.  The missing year got me thinking and I imagined what may have happened in 2009 that resulted in missing rally.  Financial hardship, a death in the family, their daughter’s wedding, or perhaps a car accident…  They had been so consistent before and since 2009 that whatever it was to cause them to miss that one year must have been really life changing and important for them to miss their tradition.

The thunder and lightning stared getting scary-close so Jesse and I left the stone house for her car before we all were zapped for being in the only thing taller than the grass for a mile in any direction.  We drove back to Belle Fouche and stopped at the thrift store.

Last year we perused the isles of the store and I found that someone had donated the largest collection of kitsch asftershaves I had ever seen.  There were bottles shaped like colt .45s, sports cars, cats, stage coaches, hot rods, cattle, Odie, and more.  Almost all of them had their original box and almost all of them were from the 1970s.  On the boxes would read something like, “Custom vans have become very popular in recent years. Acme Brand would like to celebrate this uniquely American sub-culture with this limited edition bottle of our exclusive Bedroom Eyes Aftershave.”  There is another thing all of these glorious bottles of aftershave had in common:  they all smelled like mustachio’d pornstar in a rainstorm; butterfly collar, polyester, lube and all.  The first place I laser beamed to when we entered the thrift shop was the aftershave isle.  All my old friends were still there waiting for someone with awful taste to purchase and take them all to a wonderful new home with the appropriate amount of wood veneer paneling and faded shag carpet.

Another thing to note about the Belle Fouche thrift store is that I have never seen so many wedding dresses in a second hand store in all my years.  For something that at one time represented and consumed the thoughts of so many little girls for the majority of their lives, and was worn on what was probably then, the happiest day of their lives to be discarded and priced for $70 at a used clothing store is tragic.  There were probably a hundred dresses on one rack and another dozen in giant fancy boxes on the shelf above glowing through the cellophane windows pleading, “Pick me! I am better luck the second time around!”

I purchased a couple of fantastic elaborately patterned shirts for my ever-growing collection and we drove back toward Spearfish.  The rain was hammering the car and the wipers could not keep up.  To our West we could see the front of this storm trying desperately to touch down in a tornado, but fortunately for the ranch it was teasing below, the danger never materialized.  The “buh-blams” I said with every lightning strike did not seem to amuse Jesse as much as it does the boys when I do it, but I kept saying it anyway because, most importantly, it amused me even more!

We napped at the lodge for a few hours and drove to Deadwood for dinner at the Social Club above The Saloon 10… again!  I ate a wild boar pasta and was so happy.  The band downstairs played Nickelback for the 10,000th fucking time.

An early night and we went back to the lodge.  Sunday morning I packed the truck and collected all the things the boys left behind.  Judging from the amount of clothes I found Dave must have driven back to California naked.  Jesse and I had a late goodbye breakfast at some oldpeople restaurant by I-90.  The french toast was a definite and hearty bon voyage for me.  I drove away already missing the place and not wanting to wait until next year to have the time of my life again.

I drive all day.  First was West on I-90 to Buffalo, WY, then South on I-25 to Casper, WY.  I then drove through Casper and passed the Albertsons and the Safeway where last year Aren, Erik and I made the grocery checker very concerned when all we purchased was role duct tape, a 24 pack of water, and a box of condoms.  These are the things that should sound warning sirens inside a store when three dirty men purchase them together.  These three items made complete sense to us, but the look on our checker’s face said that he had a dirty imagination.

I then drove South on SR789 through South central Wyoming.  On the furthest edge of Red Rock Desert I passed what must have been hundreds of kimberlite pipes.  Here in one of the most desolate and dry places in North America probably housed billions, if not trillions of dollars in precious diamonds.  I will be returning soon to my new “Diamond Highway”.  In Rawlins I merged onto I-80 and continued West only stopping for gas and mini donettes (or as like to call them “roadnuts”).  I exited the freeway in Point of Rocks, WY and drove North for 20 miles on “9 Mile Road”.  Yeah, that statement hurts my brain too.

I drove past the Jim Bridger Power Plant, a gigantic coal fire plant that is fed directly by one of Wyoming’s vast coal deposits right next door.  On the Southwest side of the power plant is the Jim Bridger Recreation Area.  Rad, you can breathe the sharp sulferous fart smell of coal-fire exhaust, and go fishing in the toxic retention pond at the same time.  Wunderbar!  But “No Overnight Camping!” reads the sign at the entrance.  Don’t worry, bro, I’m not going to spend my night sleeping under the brain-tingling buzz of high-tension powerlines anytime soon.

The sun set just as the power plant came into view and I had a stunning twilight drive to Black Rock at the North end of the Lucite Hills.  The Lucite Hills are named for the rare mineral found in the rocks there, lucite of course!  About 900,000 years ago a very rare volcanic eruption flooded the area in lamproite lava, quite possibly the rarest rock on Earth.  Lamproite is believed to be burped up from somewhere deep in the Earth’s belly and is rich in minerals like peridot, garnets, lucite, wyomingite, and…. Diamonds!  Lamporite has only been found in a few locations on Earth one of which is the Argyle mine in Australia that produces some 45 million carats of diamonds per year and is the only significant source of pink and ultra-rare red diamonds in the world.

I made camp and set up my cot next to my truck about a mile North of Black Rock.  I had a hell of a time getting any solid sleep as the coyotes were making a racket all around me, and every now and then, made their racket a stone’s throw from my bed (literally, I threw stones at them to get them to go away).  I slept in later than I realized and was greeted by a cool overcast sky.  I ate some donuts and drove toward Black Rock.  I passed the remnants of an old ranchers cabin and took some photos.  I find if fascinating that someone built a home out using the nearby rock, lived in this desolate place herding cattle, and never had enough curiosity to look at the shiny flecks in the rock of their home and wonder what all that green stuff was.

I parked the Honey Badger in a drywash and continued on with just the truck as the road was getting hairy.  When I got close to Black Rock I marveled.  From any distance beyond fifty feet or more any geologist would probably think Black Rock is just a weathered basalt mesa, replete with octagonal columns and all.  Black Rock isn’t black though.  It’s covered in lichens that give it a darker appearance but the rock is actually khaki in color.  It is also very light and not dense like basalt that is found in crystallized columns can be.  There are a lot of gas bubbles and strangely suspended minerals; most of which I could not identify.

My target this day were anthills.  Ants, particularly red ants, are nature’s gem miners.  They pull out anything pebbly and pile them outside their homes making the familiar cone of an anthill.  They do this so that the stones act like shingles and rainwater would runoff and not into their elaborate colony.  Fortunately, when red ants live in the soil of eroded, gem-rich rock, the pebbles they use to coat their hills are often valuable gemstones.  I was going to steal their shingles like a meth-head steals copper wire, like I owned it.

The clouds started to clear and it got hot in a hurry.  There were also no cattle for miles and the local biting fly population got to biting me, a lot.  I probably could have gone for the full glory and just destroyed every anthill in my path with a shovel and classifier screens but one hundred thousand pissed off ants kind of gave me the willies.  Instead, I opted to just crouch next to hill and pick the gems off the top and move on.  Out of a dozen or so anthills I managed to gather around 200 carats of peridot, a few red pyrope garnets, and several diamond candidates.  I was no mach for the flies and bailed about noon and drove for Nevada.

The drive was a breeze, and then it was a gale, and then it was a hurricane.  In the salt flats of Utah my truck was being blown all over the road.  Semi trucks were at a crawl for fear of tipping over, and visibility was minimal.  I was in my first salt storm.  Salt was blasting me at near 100mph and I have never had such a hard time staying on a road that goes more than fifty miles straight without one single turn.

When I got into the lee of the mountains surrounding Wendover I could see again.  What I saw was thousands of awesome race cars, hot roads, rat rods, and drag bikes.  It was speed trials week at the Bonneville Salt Flats and anyone worth their salt (yuck, yuck) were there to try and break speed records.  I snapped a couple of photos of a salt encrusted ’80s mustang at a gas station and drove West.  I reached Elko, NV about sundown and got a room at a Motel 6 ($48 a night was too much… I never thought I would think that about a motel room).  I ate dinner at the Golden Nugget Casino where a very nice meth addict repeated her memorized lines to me over and over but at least she got my order right.  I think she introduced herself to me as “Jennifer” on at least four separate occasions.  I asked if I could have a Sprite and she said they only had Sierra Mist and I did my cliche’d mocking shocked-and-disappointed face.  She thought I was seriously hurt that they didn’t have Sprite and kept apologizing to me for the duration of my meal.  Meth will make you retarded, my friends.  Don’t do it.

The next morning I poked along through Elko trying to find my friend Angie’s mom.  Angie told me to stop and say “hello” her only clue to me was that her mother was named Yvonne and she worked at a general store or small grocery on the same side of the street as the Best Western.  Well, she didn’t work at Roy’s Grocery, nor Elko General Merchandise.  Inside Elko General Merchandise I saw a woman that could believably be Angie’s mother, they looked possibly related, and I asked her if her name was Yvonne.  She told me no, “But a a gril named ‘Hannah’ works here, does that help?”  Sigh.

I was chowing on some pancakes at a diner when Angie texted me: “I’m and idiot! She lives in Carlin, oops. It’s 25 miles away.”

To Carlin, where I found Yvonne just finishing her shift at Scott’s Grocery.  She is a lovely woman and I think, at first, thought I was going to serve her with papers when I asked if her name was Yvonne.

West of Carlin I crisscrossed I-80 on the dirt access roads that orbit it and saw a lot of desert and hot, dry hills and mountains.  I had a fun time hauling ass up a dirt road over a 6,000ft pass watching the Honey Badger shake his money maker in my side mirrors.  I also passed a geothermal plant and wondered if it was the one local Bainbridge pariah Gary Tripp lost his shirt on.  I hoped so.  In my opinion convicted felons who talk endlessly about their alien abduction experiences and past lives, and who also lie about being PhDs, just shouldn’t try to be morally superior to everyone else; and it doesn’t make me a bad person to take joy in their financial demise when they have been terrorizing the poor for decades.

I wanted to hug the Humboldt River when I got outside of Battle Mountain so I drove Izzenhood Rd to a dead end… well, to The Izzenhood Ranch where I they would not let me drive the 300ft passed their home to the other rest of the road.  I double back, with four gallons of fuel wasted.  I got onto I-80 and exited again at exit 205.  The road was fine dust, then it was dirt and graded, then the road vanished.  My map said showed a road, I found the Union Pacific Railroad instead.  Every now and and then as I blazed my new trail some frozen ruts in the mud would appear.  It only occurred to me as I was driving through neck-deep grass (something you should never, ever, never do, by the way, as you might burn an entire state down with the hot engine and transmission!  I had to do it because I couldn’t backup the Honey Badger for ten miles.  I am not that skilled) that I was probably smushing the historic 160 year old wagon ruts of The California Trail.  Oops.

After twenty miles of blazing my own trail I found an actual ranch road and made the turn around the north end of the Iron Range along the Humboldt.  I could see the perfectly sculpted remains of the old Union Pacific Railroad and some of the old trestles even.  I turned onto the Midas Highway and drove into Golconda passing several dozen mine buses.  The mines are so far out into the toolies that no one lives near them so the mining companies have giant buses pick up the workers for their four-day-on shifts.

I breezed into Winnemucca by evening and got a room at Super 8 (only slightly better than Motel 6); I needed Internet to write these awesome trip reports you love so much.  That is when I noticed yet another set of magnetic tail lights bit the dust (No really, they dragged in the dust for hours, and bit it).

Wednesday morning I got new tail lights and made a marathon run home.  The minute I crossed the border into the Oregon Outback everything was dead.  For a hundred miles I drove and every single hill side from horizon to horizon was a charred.  By my estimate 1,000sq miles or more had burned.  No one noticed, it didn’t make the news, and no one seemed to care since this is the least populated region in the whole of the continental United States.  Yet another reason all the air in the Western United States was blue with smoke.  I sped through Burns, OR and savored the daylight drive through Divinity Canyon.  I made a stop to pan some gold out of the John Day River and got a taco from the cuties at the Shell station.  I entered Fossil Beds National Monument and was in awe of Picture Canyon.  The diverse terrain of the the Mountains of central Oregon are always overlooked.  This thinly populated region is the most beautiful in the United States.  Period.  Big mountains, badlands, rainbow-colored ash layers, ancient forests, high plains, green pastures, ambling rivers, old west mining towns, cowboys, hill folk, and tons of animals dodging traffic.  Just gorgeous!

I made it to the dry hay fields of Condon, OR as the sun set.  A few miles later on my decent towards the Columbia River I was startled by the sight of the entire horizon blinking like red Christmas lights.  Some clever person made all of the thousands of wind turbines blink on and off in unison.  It’s hilarious.

Night time, it’s dark, I didn’t see anything, I got home at 3am.  The End!

Until next time…

A Mosey Through Nevada

I woke up late (as per usual), pussy-footed around (not so unlike me), and finally got my tush on the road about 2:30 in the afternoon; that’s what I meant by, “I’m leaving in the morning.” The drive South into Oregon was OK, I decided at the last minute to cut East and go down Highway 97 and gave my old coworker Kryn, who lives in Bend, a call and see if she wanted to meet up for a very late dinner.

I rolled into Bend just before 10pm and we had a nice meal. She is loving Bend, it’s a town designed for outdoorsy young adults, and she is an outdoorsy young adult. We had a great, brief time, said our goodbyes and I got back on the road around midnight.

South of Bend I turned onto Highway 31 by the town of La Pine. All the pine trees were dark and ominous. The sky was ablaze with lightning and I could feel the rumble of the thunder through the armrest of my truck’s door. I finally pulled over and got some shuteye about 1:30 and slept cramped in a ball in the cab of the truck due to the lightning storm.

By morning the skies were clearing and I drove to Fort Rock. Ft Rock is a pretty cool geologic feature. It was a cindercone volcano that formed under an ice age lake. As a result the “tuff” that formed the ring of the cone baked into a brick leaving behind a natural fort. The earliest peoples used the shores around Fort Rock as a camp on the once great lake. The caves in Fort Rock have produced sage sandals over 10,000 years old!

From Ft Rock I went further South into Summer Lake and Paisley where I finally had breakfast (I wish I had one of my hundreds of paisley shirts… Oh well).   South of Paisley are the crumbled remnants of an obsidian lava flow. I grabbed some fine specimens. Then I turned onto Highway 140 (in the Spring time this is the most beautiful place on Earth; in the Summer: meh). That took me past my opal claim. It was best not to stop and dig opals as it was 92 in the shade–and there is no shade in this part of the country.

I decided to continue on to Winnemucca to refill my tank and my belly. I ate at a casino attached to the Holiday in Express. The restaurant was a Mexican Joint called “Dos Amigos” where I was waited on by the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. What the hell this vision was doing serving a schlub like me in backwater, NV I’ll never know.

I left Winnemucca about 6pm and chose to stay the night Unionville. About 30 miles South of Winnemucca is a ghost town called Star City. Star City was the site of a large silver mining operation and boasted 1,200 residents at one time complete with all the bars and brothels a town of that size required. The road up the Star City was a piece of cake… At first! I ditched the Honey Badger (my ghetto trailer that tags along with me on these adventures) and pushed on in just the truck. The road got worse, and then worse, and then impossible. I stopped the truck and got out to hike up and see if there was a place to turn around further up, because backing down thise narrow road was going to be deadly.

I found the teensiest turn around about 500 yards up the mountain, but I was going to have to drive through some decent sized bushes (trees?) To get there. Oh well, let’s do this! The truck was a champ, just mowing down nature, and then I died. Well, actually what I thought was, “Oh God, I am going to die… I should have asked out that waitress… Damnit!”

To my right is a sheer cliff that goes up to the ridge, to my left is a 6ft drop down into a pretty gnarly creek. The bank gave way under my front driver’s side tire and my truck began to roll into the creek. For some reason I steered into my doom, and rather than rolling the full weight of my F150 onto my head and drowning in the creek alone and never to be found, I drove down the embankment and ended up with my truck bisecting the creek.

Once My heartrate calmed down, I did my best Austin Powers impersination and completed an 87 point turn around in the creek and was now pointed downstream. I went from accepting my inevitable demise to, “What the hell do I do now?” What I did was class three rapids in a Ford! I drove more than half a mile down a mountain creek (including what could be considered a rather large waterfall for a truck) until there was a point I could drive out of the creek and back on to the primitive road.

I returned to the Honey Badger, gave Star City the finger, and headed back down the mountain. I arrived at the turn off for Unionville about 9pm and decided I had had enough for one day and made camp under the Unionville information sign on the side of the road.

This is where I discovered that I am easily mistaken for a cattle rustler. My arrival was the most exciting thing this dead end road has had in 150 years. By 11pm dozens of ranchers were swirly around me. Word had gotten out that some cattle rustlers had arrived in the dead of night and were by the mailboxes at the end of the road (I was camped at the mailboxes at the end of the road). Much to all these ranchers’ relief (maybe disappointment for some who may have wanted a new trophy to mount in their study), as it turns out, that I was not there to in fact take their cows. We all had a good laugh, they put away their shotguns and went back to their ranches concluding that the Honey Badger can barely carry my cooler let alone a 1500lb animal or two.

The next morning one of the ranchers was so kind as to wake me up at 6am for a chat about how well I slept the night before. “I slept very well, until some jackass woke me up at 6!”

I packed up my cot and bag and rolled up the mountain to the ghost towns of Buena Vista and Unionville. There I saw two famous people’s homes: Mark Twain’s cabin when he failed miserably as a gold miner; and Sandra Bullock’s less humble manor. I peed in Twain’s outhouse and drove South through the desert toward Fallon, NV.

I drove past Shanghai Canyon, site of my infamous fall down a cliff and subsequent hospital bill. At the base of the canyon was a herd of wild horses. I started taking a panorama of the horses and the mountain. If I had waited 5 seconds I would have had a Navy F4 in my photo. I took the last image and my heart exploded out of my chest as Mr. Comedy did a flyby of my face and scared the shit out of me. I managed to get a photo of him on his return pass.

I am now in Fallon contemplating a $10 shower at a truck stop and writing this long screed using my thumbs and my cellphone!

More to come!