Absolute positively the worst road ever

jamesu wrote:
OR-31 between Valley Falls and La Pine, OR. 120 miles. An absolute Washboard for a good 80-90 miles of that route.....

I've driven that about a dozen years ago and don't recall it being bad. OK,it was in cute-ute not a RV. And come to think of it, I didn't drive the whole way.

We spent the night at Summer Lake Hot Springs - nice rustic camping and soaking. And then back tracked to Paisley for breakfast, and then drove up into the mountains to the east. And didn't get back to 31 until Silver Lake. The forest service roads in the area were normal gravel. Even drove most of the way up to Hagar Mtn Lookout.

After Silver Lake I detoured to Fort Rock. On a gravel road near Hole in the Ground I got a flat from a broken piece of chain saw file (talk about a bumpy ride!). I was able to plug it, and drove on to La Pine.

One of the worse pieces of washboard that I recall was the Sun Pass road (623) between OR62 and US97, just east of Crater Lake. On the paper map it looked like a nice straight shortcut. It was a wide and straight, without much of a grade, but gravel that hadn't seen a grader in a long while. It was the kind of washboard that you either go slow, or fast, skimming the bumps, while still trying to maintain control. That too was in a cute-ute, a first gen RAV4.

Gravel with varying degrees of washboard is the norm in eastern Oregon - both in the mountains and the high desert.

On the subject of the Oregon outback, just last summer a back country bikepacker came upon a severely dehydrated man on a dirt track between OR140 and Hart Mtn Refuge. He had a Spot emergency beacon, and was able to signal for help. And in the mean time he provided a bit of water and shelter. Turns out the man had gotten his pickup stuck in one of the ruts/gullies near there, and tried to walk out. He had two small dogs as well. All three survived, largely thanks to the fortuitous encounter with a long distance bike rider.