Good Medicine

Tuesday September 25 2012

If you're feeling blah, or deflated, or out of sorts, and you really can't be motivated to be impassioned because you can't ride your favorite horse because he has an ill-timed allergy attack, the best thing that can happen is that your friend talks you into climbing aboard one of her extra lovely horses, who gets you out on another spectacular Owyhee trail, like 50 miles on Day 1 of the Owyhee Canyonlands.

When your horse takes you up to the mouth of Brown's Creek Canyon

then climbs above it

so you can look down in it

then he takes you to the Spivey Ranch on Castle Creek for lunch

then he takes you further up Castle Creek

then he climbs up out of Castle Creek

and he carries you back toward home across the Brown's Creek drainage

and across and up the steep hill out of Alder Creek 

and across and up the very steep hill out of Hart Creek

and back home,

you know that if it doesn't cure what ails ya, riding in Owyhee is at least good medicine.

Thanks Judy and Milon!

More photos and stories:

http://www.endurance.net/international/USA/2012OwyheeCanyonlands/

Castle Creek Loop

Tuesday July 6 2010

Just when you think you've seen the most dramatic canyon in the Owyhees, you are knocked for a loop once again.

We did it - we found a loop to take riders along a piece of the rim above spectacular Castle Creek canyon on one of the days of the September 5-day Owyhee Canyonlands ride. These pictures don't make you gasp out loud like we were doing. (I'm going back there with my good camera.)

If you come to the ride and do the 50 miles on the Castle Creek day, we guarantee you'll be gasping for breath at the view.

The Quarry

Sunday July 4 2010

Sure, I'd heard about The Quarry. You could get some cool rocks there. It was pointed out to me in the distance when I first visited here 5 years ago when Steph and John took me on a ride. I recall seeing white 'badlands' bluffs, and figuring it was a place where people went and fetched themselves white crumbly rock off bluffs. I knew there were BLM roads that took you there, but who needed to see more white rock? We have that in our canyon.

Oh, no no, that was not The Quarry.

This is The Quarry - a chasmic canyon of maroon, vermillion, red, and burgundy, cliffs, pillars and hoodoo-like columns on Castle Creek.








Holy moly!




Yet another shocker of an Owyhee canyon. Steph's figuring out how to include it in the 5-day Owyhee Canyonlands endurance ride at the end September.

Even Jose was quite impressed.


(I'll soon be making a return visit!)

Owyhee: Castle Creek Canyon Trail

Monday August 31 2009

Another gorgeous day of exploring the Owyhee desert on horseback, with Jose getting to escort two of his ladies up Castle Creek Canyon.

Starting in the Owyhee Mountain foothills, we rode along an old road beside the creek - possibly originally built by miners 150 years ago, or at least in the 1950's by homesteaders on the creek. We know it's at least as early as the 1950's, because we rode by an old rusted-out 1950's Buick, overgrown with weeds and sagebrush.


There are remnants of a couple of mines, and several homestead sites, some with wooden cabins or parts of them still standing, some with stone ruins.




The leftover irrigation canals are still evident, all of them likely dug with a fresno scraper (invented 1883, a blade that scooped up the soil and deposited it on the side as it went along) and mule. There is still a live orchard (plums, apples), an old berry patch, a cemetery, and a few scattered poplar trees, which were popular among homesteaders.

It really made you think of those people who chose to eke out a living here in the middle of nowhere. It was an easy 7-mile ride for us up the canyon - after we hauled 11 miles to get to our starting point - and we hauled from Oreana, which really still is in the middle of nowhere. Back in the old days you wouldn't ride to the nearest town every day for a latte, and you wouldn't drive your wagon every week to the nearest town for a bag of groceries or a newspaper.


We found it quite beautiful - another hidden surprise in the high desert - a trail for recreation now. Wonder what the people who lived here a hundred years ago thought of it?


More photos of our Castle Creek Canyon ride at www.endurance.net/merri