Denio - 5th and 6th Legs

After making 5-6 miles from east of Denio on Day 5 (Directly above), we set up to knock out some mileage to the west of Denio on Day 6. Figured on doing some of the flat table top desert from about 12 miles to 25 miles west of Denio, but ended up further west where Hwy 140 crosses the line. We dropped the truck near the highway and headed east on the bikes via some desert roads and a few miles along the fenceline. Pretty easy walking along a fence line the whole way back with just a couple of small canyons and plateaus to cross. Saw some more antelopes. We'll have another 15 mile segment to the east we could have done the next day, but the weather closed in and we had a slow leak in a tire when we got back to Denio for the evening. Rowdy bar (Above left) with all the locals yukking it up over the idiot "Valley Boys" walking across their territory. We aired up the tire after dinner and headed to Fields since they have the ability to break down and repair tires. Slept in their parking area and had breakfast at the Fields Cafe. Young former Marine/disabled vet made us breakfast at the cafe and directed us to the tire shed to work on our tire. Ended up being able to get it off and plug the leak without having to break the tire down. Day was shot and weather was turning bad, spitting snow, so we decided to do some exploring and check the forecast for the next day. I took Dwane to see the Borax Hot Springs a few miles out of Fields in the desert valley floor. I've been there many times, but he hadn't seen this site where Borax was harvested and then transported via wagon around the turn of the century for a couple of years to Winemmucca and the railroad. Much of the earthworks still exist where they'd drain water from one of two 10-20 acre warm lakes (Top picture), let the water evaporate, rake up the borax and dry it under large open fires before shipping. There is a fault line about a 1/4 mile long extending north from the shallow lakes where small springs boil up through the desert floor ranging from boiling (2d picture above) to luke warm water. We headed back towards Denio (See the yard art "chopper" pic) around noon to check the weather forecast while eating some lunch. Bad news - snow and rain Friday with only Sat expected to be clear. The Cafe let me plug in to the web to confirm and we decided our trip was about over. We'd met a colorful local the day before who owns an Opal mine west of town, so we decided we'd drop in on him on our way back home that afternoon. We hit another hot spring, Bog Hot (3rd Pic above), on the way and stopped by to tour his "digs" on the Sheldon Wildlife Refuge. Headed on into Lakeview, grabbed a sandwich and headed west to Creswell, arriving just after midnight.

We've covered the first 50+ miles west from three corners to the base of the Trout Mtns, another 6 miles of the valley floor straddling Denio, and about 12 miles ending at Hwy 140 and the stateline - pushing 70 miles total. Kind of weak as we'd hoped to have 100 miles completed by the end of this last week and we're not sure when we'll get another shot at some miles.