There isn’t an App for this.

It is easy to get blasé about your experiences in life and find it harder and harder to be truly impressed, but the Steens Mountains in Eastern Oregon possess the ability to blow your socks off.

In fact, nothing prepares you for the view from the East Rim Overlook.

After a twenty mile dirt road ride from the Frenchglen Hotel, you have climbed from 4,000 feet to almost 10,000 feet in altitude without seeming to notice the slope, passing aspens changing colour and staring down into the Kiger Gorge. Arriving at the parking spot for the overlook, still, all you see is a notice board. Then you walk the remaining fifty feet and the whole world falls away to reveal a mile deep drop to the Alvord Desert and a view to “infinity and beyond”, hundreds of miles to the east.

I defy you to take these few steps and not scream WOW over and over whether someone is listening or not.

If you are here on a motorbike that is capable of this journey, then there is no alternative to finishing the Steens Loop and dropping down to Fields, OR and then back north along the base of this escarpment and onto the Alvord Desert that you can see in the panorama view.

This is dry, mainly, lake bed about 8 miles by 15 miles with smooth clay – an irresistible proposition for anyone on wheels – motorbikes, cars, land yachts, and kiteboards all come out to play.

We are all better off doing plenty of things for which there ISN’T and App.