Owyhee Uplands Back Country Byway
I spent four hours driving around the Owhee Uplands Byway looking for access to my transect, and failed.
The further I went, the more ominous the signage.
The Owyhee is a 101 mile stretch of road through vast BLM country and a few private ranches that have been here since the 1800s - some of the most remote country in the lower forty-eight.
My transect is only about thirty kilometers south of this road, but I kept running into locked gates and no trespassing signs on what, according to my research, should have been public right of way roads.
Everybody around here has guns and if they think they own the roads too, okay. I'm not getting shot over some Horned Lark and Sage Sparrows.
Angry and on the point of tears, I finally gave up and just looked around.
I found birdhouses. Whoever did that, thank you. Maybe it was the same person who planted the native bunchgrass?
I found a group of cyclists riding from Jordon Valley, Oregon, to Grand View, Idaho. These are tough people; it was still eighty degrees at six pm.