Oregon Trails: A road trip down memory lane to Madison Butte Trail
Any excuse for a road trip to Fossil is good, but this one might get you to pack the car. Would you believe that the dry desert canyonlands near that Eastern Oregon outpost have a mountain trail with dense forests, alpine wildflowers and patches of snow in May? Because Madison Butte is so remote and so improbable, it was one of the few trails in Oregon I had never hiked. Of course I wanted to go. Janell and I loved the place, partly because the road trip there allowed us to relive one of our earliest adventures together — a bicycle trip to Fossil in 1974. If you have a couple of days free,...