Visited the Steens for a few days - roads were in and out - the loop was closed. Beautiful country, and well worth a visit....especially if you have a hunting tag for the area. This review is for the Page Springs Campground - it has to be one of the nicest campgrounds I've stayed in. It's run by the BLM - they take credit cards or cash, but will charge you "extra" for your vehicle - over and above the cost of the campsite. Yes - campsite and car are charged separately. We paid $21 per night for camp and 1 car. The sites are very large and spread out. Privacy was not an issue. Some were shaded and some were out in the open. It's a very popular campground though, and is first come, first serve. We showed up on an October Thursday at 5pm and there were only 2 sites left. There are other private and BLM campgrounds nearby, though not nearly as nice. read more

If you're in the area, or if you love stunning drives and don't mind being out of the way, you must take this drive. It's on a dirt road but don't let that put you off, these two nanna's drove a Ford C-Max with exactly 5.5" of clearance to the top and never hit a bump. It's a beautiful dirt road. If dirt roads can be called beautiful. And the views are drop dead gorgeous. Imagine standing on the edge of a 6,000 foot cliff with a white desert below, black mountains in the distance and clouds here and there that you're looking down on. This isn't my first dog and pony show with escarpments like this, but it was definitely one of the most majestic and sublime I've seen. The drive up is also beautiful, but in a, gosh, what a pretty landscape, sort of way. It's the top that you come for though, if you're a religious person you could probably find God up there, it's that jaw dropping. For a bathroom; about 1/2 way up look for Fish Lake on a little spur road. There are also a few campgrounds up there. What a find. Hopefully someday I'll be back but next time with a motor home so I can spend some time there and do some serious trekking. read more

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Wow. If you ever need a reason to drive to the very far south-eastern corner of Oregon, this, my friends, is it. I'm dead serious. We drove through the Steens Mountain Wilderness on the Steens Mountain Loop on a lark. After stopping through Fields Station, the locals suggested it would be worth the detour. Oh boy, it was. This mountain plateau jumps up to around 9,000 feet in elevation. We rolled through in late June on a year with a record early summer. Normally at this time the roads would be impassable from snow, but on our visit there were only a few patches left, with tons of wildflowers and stunning views. The loop kicks off of State Highway 205 and runs up into the wilderness, loops around a great canyon, and comes back down out near Frenchglen. It's dirt the whole way, with steep grades, switchbacks, and a few spots to pull off and score insane views of massive canyons, open vistas, and rugged cliffs. We snaked up this road deep into the heart of Steens. Along the way we saw some horses out on the range (yup, there are wild horses out here!!), we stopped to grab panoramas of a couple of massive canyons cleaved into the side of the plateau, and enjoyed vistas off of the east rim of the plateau - off into the flat lands beyond. My words don't do it justice, but the photos attached to my review should give you some idea. There's nothing out here. It's BLM land cooperatively managed with local ranchers. It should stay that way. This is a treasure. There is a small observatory or something up top, plenty of places to hike and horseback ride, and it seems some hunting. It's worth coming up here just to see wild horses! No visit to this corner of Oregon is complete without a trip into Steens, and I'd venture to say that it's worth the trip out from Portland alone to see this and some of the other beauty that makes up an underestimated corner of our state. read more

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If it weren't for the sssholes jumping out of their trucks to shoot animals from the side of a scenic road, this would be one of the top three places I've visited in Oregon. read more