Honeymoon Day 3: Steins Pillar Trail

There are a ton of hiking trails near Wildcat Campground, and we meant to check them all out, but we ended up only getting one of them in: Steins Pillar trail. Steins Pillar is an awesome sight that you can see from the road to Wildcat Campground. It’s a huge pillar of stone rising from the ground. The pillar is the tube of what was once a volcano that used to sit there. When travelling to Wildcat Campground, you can check out Steins Pillar one of two ways: you can take the winding road up to the hiking trail, or you can continue on for just a bit more to look at it from the view point. I forgot to document the information at the viewpoint, but apparently Steins is a misspelling of the last name of the man who discovered the pillar.

The trail itself is a 4-mile hike round trip—although we only managed about 3 of it. It starts by going uphill pretty steep until reaching the top of a rise. There’s a beautiful view of the surrounding area, in addition to a few of the Cascades peaking over the horizon. When we got to the top of the rise, I shouted in success that I was King of

the Mountain. Alas, that was only the beginning of our little adventure.

What followed was a series of switchbacks that led us from hilltop to hilltop—with no sign of the pillar in sight. We had no idea how long it would take us, but we kept at it—promising each other that if there was no sign of the pillar, we’d head back.

We finally reached a part of the hike where the trail headed sharply downhill. We briefly considered heading back at this point. We had no idea how much longer it would take. However, we stubbornly decided to stick with it for a few minutes more.

We headed down the hillside, and as we rounded the corner, we made the most delightful discovery of the whole hike. It wasn’t Stein’s Pillar; it was a signpost. Up until this point, the only signage we had seen was the signpost at the head of the trail—denoting the trail’s name and number. This sign, however, directed us to the left—to the Stein’s Pillar viewpoint. The trail also continued forward towards Stein’s Pillar itself.

We headed to the viewpoint, and the hike was totally worth the view. We could see Stein’s Pillar from behind—a totally different view than the one from the road below. Sarah and I stopped for a short

break to rest, rehydrate, and refuel our bodies. We took several pictures, including an elk print that Sarah discovered.

We debated whether or not to continue the rest of the way to Stein’s Pillar, but decided in the end to call this a win and head back to camp. The hike back up the hill towards the switchbacks was rough, and there were times I didn’t think I’d make it, but we managed to walk the long trek back to the car. From there, we drove back to Wildcat Campground.

Honeymoon Days 3 & 4: Wildcat Campground

We left the High Desert Museum in a hurry on the second full day of our honeymoon. Wildcat Campground in Ochoco National Forest—our next destination—was over 60 miles away, and we still needed to restock our supplies in Bend.

We left Bend via Powell Butte Highway, passing through the community of Powell Butte on our way to Prineville. By avoiding Highway 97, we got a chance to view the sights of rural Oregon. It was a nice change of pace from the usual scenery of the major highways, and I highly recommend the drive.

Going through Prineville, we saw a historic looking building that turned out to be the town’s courthouse. We admired the building so much, we came back through the next day to take pictures.

We switched highways in Prineville and headed down Highway 26 towards John Day. Just past Ochoco Lake is a road heading to Mill Creek Wildness in Ochoco National Forest—and our destination there: Wildcat Campground.

Due to delays in Bend—and the pressure to make sure we made it to Wildcat Campground before the sun went down—we didn’t have enough time to pick up all the supplies we needed. Therefore, we set up the tent and headed back into town. Prineville didn’t have a Walmart like we were looking for, so we ended up having to drive all the way to Redmond for our supplies. However, we did get treated to the sight of a really cool rainbow in the Walmart parking lot. It had been a double rainbow, but by the time I was able to take a shot of it, one of them had disappeared.

By the time we got back to Wildcat Campground, it was dark, so we retired to the tent and relaxed the rest of the night. We awoke the next morning to a beautiful day, and actually had the time and energy to cook breakfast for the first time our whole trip. Sarah cooked, while I set our places at the table. Each campsite at Wildcat Campground—like many campsites like it—provide a picnic table and a fire pit. We didn’t use the fire pit that morning for breakfast—using instead a propane stove we borrowed from my mom.

After breakfast, I cleaned dishes—since Sarah cooked. We chose a campsite close to the water pump, so we wouldn’t have to walk far. The water pump at Wildcat Campground is pretty cool. It’s one of those old-style hand pump that you have to prime before the water comes out. Sarah managed to get off a shot of my filling up our water bottles—embarassingly catching me missing the water bottle and hitting the ground instead!

We took advantage of the gorgeous day to do some hiking. Neither of us had hiked anywhere in recent memory, so we knew it would be a lot of work. We packed up plenty of food and water and headed out in the car to our destination: Steins Pillar Trail.

The hike had drained so much of our energy that day that we cancelled a drive we had planned for later that day along the road past Wildcat Campground. So we rested the rest of the day and had dinner. We tried to make a fire to roast marshmallows and make s’mores, but had the worst luck starting a fire. I managed to roast a few marshmallows before the fire died on us, and we decided to just spend some time together before we headed to bed.

We had planned to hike to Twin Pillars in Mill Creek Wilderness the next day, but the weather had other plans. I woke at 5 am to a call of nature. As I walked to the rest rooms, I noticed that it was starting to sprinkle. I called it a blessing that I woke before it had started raining, and packed all our gear left outside into the truck.

I then headed back into the tent and went back to sleep, waking up a few hours later to the sound of rain beating down on the tent. I noticed that the edges of the tent on the floor were dampish, but thought nothing of it. It was only condensation, right? Not wanting to wake Sarah up, but also not wanting to sit outside in the rain, I took a book into the truck and starting reading. I stayed there reading until I noticed that I was getting water dripped on me. Turns out, my step dad’s truck that we had borrowed for the honeymoon leaked in the upper corners of the windshield. I wiped up the excess water with a rag and continued reading.

I was there reading until Sarah finally came to the truck a few hours later. She had woken up to discover that the floor of the tent had started to flood from all the rain. My pillows were soaked, and the sleeping bags were also quickly soaking up the water as well. We rushed into action at this point. Fortunately we had bought a large box of trash bags to take with us, and we started loading things from the tent. Anything already packed up, went right into the back of the truck. Everything wet also went into bags—we wanted to take them into Prineville and find a laundromat to dry them off. We also put everything still dry into bags and left them in the center of the tent—which was still dry.

So we headed to Prineville to find a laundromat. However, now the real fun began. Remember that leaking problem I mentioned earlier? Well it turns out that it had let so much moisture in the cab of the truck that the defrost had trouble keeping the windshield clear. As we drove the truck into town, we constantly had to rewipe the condensation off the windshield to see the road. We finally figured out—after I was able to get signal on one of our cell phones and called my step dad—that if we rolled down the windows, it would help the defrost be able to keep the windshield clear.

However, the drive back to town brought up an interesting question: what were we going to do if it didn’t stop raining by the end of the day? We obviously couldn’t sleep in the tent if it was raining and leaked. The inevitable answer to that question was another question: how much money did we have left? We did a quick tally of our remaining finances and decided that if we came home a day early, we could use the remaining money to stay at a motel or bed and breakfast. After discussing the merits and flaws of that decision, we both came to the conclusion that it would be best.

So after drying our pillows and sleeping bags, we headed back to camp and packed up the tent. The ground where the tent laid was still dry, and I took a picture of it to show just how wet we’d gotten. Once the camp was all packed up, we headed back on the road and towards what would be our last destination of our honeymoon: Sisters.