Once we got up in it, we realized that the Sheldon Antelope Refuge was huge! It stretches all the way over to highway 140 up by the Oregon border. Scattered around the refuge are the remains of various old homesteads and barns that I had fun taking pictures of and exploring.
The land out here is large rolling hills with grass and rocks. Less sagebrush. Very serene.
We saw our herd of antelope out in a field and apparently spooked them so just like deer, they ran as fast as they could in front of our car. 😉
After a few hours of just generally driving around taking in the scenery we started to search for a campsite for the night. What we failed to realize when we headed down this way was that it was hunting season. Not just that, but opening weekend… so everyone has their big 5th wheel camper out for its yearly outing into the wilderness. Jason has a strong aversion to people so we drove around for a few hours trying to find the perfect secluded campsite. (which means: no other people at it) The going was slow because the road disintegrated and we didn’t want to pop a tire on a rock. I was VERY ready for dinner by the time we stopped.
I think you could spend a week out here exploring all the roads and trails and still not see it all. We didn’t leave ourselves enough time to hike, so maybe on our next trip we can spend a few days here. Either way, we dallied long enough and woke up the next morning refreshed and ready to hit the road and make our way to the desert! However, we didn’t want to go all the way back to Route 34, because by the time we finally found a campsite with a suitable amount of people (none, other than us. Jason has strict standards!) we had gone quite a ways into the middle of the refuge. It worked out pretty nicely because one of the roads that Jason really wanted to drive while he was out here was Soldier Meadows Road. I’m pretty sure he just saw pictures of it on the internet, thought it looked like a remote scenic road/trail that the Jeep could actually do and not get destroyed on. There is a huge trail system out here, but you need a rock crawler or vehicle you don’t care about… This Jeep is neither! We made our way out of the refuge and hooked up with Soldier Meadows and kept on going!