… both found in Oregon, way in the back of beyond.
Behind where our trailer was parked in Adel
Far away from the population centers of the State of Oregon, we spent four nights in the town of Adel. Not so sure you could even call it a small town -- the population is only 201. There's a restaurant/bar with a post office next door . We parked in one of the four or five RV sites behind those buildings. There is really nothing much else there except sagebrush and cows. (This is where we were staying when we woke up to the cattle drive passing right behind us.)
Eighteen miles away on a secondary highway is the even smaller "unincorporated rural area" of Plush. Around 50 hearty souls live there. We had already driven through Plush on that fairly decent highway as we were out exploring. But the travel planner/driver was tired of good roads. After all, we were on vacation -- why drive roads as good as those at home? (Normal people would answer that differently from dyed-in-the-wool road warriors.) Our maps showed a country road that would eventually also emerge at Plush.
So we took "the road less traveled." And that road was unpaved and narrow and winding with very little to see along most of it but sagebrush and the remnants of abandoned dreams. And we loved it!

Before too many miles, the road got narrower and more winding with rocks and boulders to navigate around. Bill knows how to drive them and I trust him -- mostly. There was the one time I had to get out to direct us around a huge boulder in the middle of the road. It was on a rise that we couldn't see over. We rocked over that one, but the road gradually got worse and worse. We talked about finding a turn-around place, but there really wasn't a good one. It was then that we came to a fence and rusty wire cattle gate that looked like it hadn't been opened for years. But "we" managed to open and then shut it behind us. The road continued to deteriorate and shortly our car was straddling two-foot deep ruts that we were afraid we'd slide into. (Did I mention that we hadn't seen another living soul all day?) It was definitely time to give up. But at least there was a good place to turn around.
One of us thinks that a reason to use four-wheel drive makes any trip worthwhile. And the other one of us likes to take pictures of abandoned buildings and big skies. But before we realized we would need to turn around we had already made a wonderful discovery (new to us anyway) that would have made the trip worthwhile in itself. We found petroglyphs!

Greaser Canyon Petroglyph Site
(Click to enlarge, but there are close-up shots below)
There was no sign along the road pointing to this historical site which is quite a ways back from the road. And, in fact, we had driven past by the time I really realized what I'd seen from the window. After the well-known "STOP" screech, Bill was able to back up (a good trick, because see above). This site is on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) property and there is a small sign at the base of the rock wall. It said there had been some archeological reconstruction due to vandalism. I assume the rocks were moved from the ground to protect them somehow although they were not fenced at all. The sign also warns that altering the designs in any way is a violation of federal law. It is horrible to think that anyone could take time to get to this remote place and then try to destroy such treasures from our past. (But it is very remote -- once again on this whole day of exploration we did not see another person or car. I don't know if that makes it good or bad for the safety of this site.)

These photos are enhanced. I don't have a fancy editing tool, but I used Picassa Boost to bring out the shapes of the petroglyphs.
We didn't know a single thing about these petroglyphs before stumbling on them and had seen nothing in any of the visitor guides we looked at, but later found a bit of information on the web. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Archeologists believe the designs were scraped into the boulders around 12,000 years ago. Back then lakes filled many of the high desert basins and the people who occupied the land camped and hunted near those waters. The meaning of the marks they left behind has been lost over time. As with most petroglyphs and pictographs, no one knows exactly why they were made or what they represented. It is poignant and almost incomprehensible to think about the people from so long ago who once walked right where we were walking. And to wonder ...

People have disappeared from this area in more recent times too for reasons it is easier to comprehend. Here's an illustration just waiting for a sad story to be written. We saw this abandoned home before we turned around to back-track to our home away from home. The picture is zoomed in -- the house was pretty far from the (very poor) road! It felt so remote and lonely.
The next picture was taken on a a different day, along the highway between Adel and Plush (the good road).

We saw these sweet babies run to the fence every time we drove that road. It seemed almost like whenever they heard a car these donkeys thought they would be getting a treat. We didn't stop but I hope their owners did so frequently.

And here's a sign at the gas station letting us know that Plush is "a small quiet drinking town with a cattle problem." I wouldn't doubt any of that except that I'm pretty sure that a population of around 50 doesn't actually make it a town at all. And then we saw this other sign on the fence around the station:

We had read that sunstones could be found somewhere in this area -- and this sign told us that a dig was located 24 miles from Plush. Just past a Dust Devil? Plush itself is pretty much in the middle of nowhere and now you can drive 24 more miles to see some stones you know nothing about? And the collection area might be hard to find because who knows exactly where the dust devil would be! We thought the sign was a joke (dust devils are what we here in the West call those little mini-storms of soil that the wind sometimes whirls on arid lands and fallow farm fields). But the trip even further into the back of beyond sounded like just the kind of thing we loved. So off we went -- and when we got there we learned that the sign wasn't a joke after all. Dust Devil is actually the name of a commercial Sunstone Mine.

And this is it! The Dust Devil Mine. It's open to the public to sort through the conveyor belt (for a fee) and there is also a free BLM dig area where people can camp and dig for the stones. It looked like paying for a lot of hot and dusty work! So we decided to collect information, but not gems. After seeing so few people while we'd been exploring the area, it was amazing to see quite a few campers and gem hunters at this commercial mine and at the other campground.
from the Web public domain
I was still a little freaked out talking to people and didn't take many pictures because this was back in early June and we seemed to be about the only people there still wearing Covid masks. But everyone we spoke with was friendly and we did learn quite a bit about the sunstone which is the official Oregon state gem. (I didn't even know we had one.) One lady showed us a few she had found and some jewelry she had made earlier. And people who helped out at the mine told us a bit about the operation. For anyone who is more of a jewelry person that I am, there are several websites and people sell their sunstone creations on Etsy. But we were just happy to have found the site and to learn something new about our home State.

We saw a pair of sandhill cranes along the road on the way back to Adel after that interesting day. Every day really was an adventure during our time in Southeastern Oregon -- we were happy and grateful to get to travel again and to see and learn all we did.
LINKING this week to the following sharing sites:
MOSAIC MONDAY; NATURE NOTES; THROUGH MY LENS; TRAVEL PHOTO SOUVENIRS; OUR WORLD ON TUESDAY; TUESDAY TREASURES; MY CORNER OF THE WORLD; SIGNS SIGNS; THANKFUL THURSDAY; SKYWATCH FRIDAY; FRIDAY BLISS; and SATURDAY CRITTERS;